m 


U3RARY 

i  -ITT  Of 

OL  FORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 


presented  to  the 
UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
SAN  DIEGO 

by 
Douglas  Warren 


THE  LADY 

^t     t  O 


Princesse  de  Conde  as  Diana. 

From  the  painting  by  Nattier.     Formerly  in  possession  of  Marie  Antoinette. 
Now  in  the  Metropolitan   Museum,  New   York. 


THE  LADY 


STUDIES  OF  CERTAIN  SIGNIFICANT 
PHASES  OF  HER  HISTORY 


EMILY  JAMES  PUTNAM 


ILLUSTRATED 


flew  U?orfc 

STURGIS  &  WALTON 
COMPANY 

1910 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright  iqio 
By  EMILY  JAMES  PUTNAM 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  October,  1910 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


TO 

A.  L.  S. 


PAGE 

INTRODUCTION vii 

THE  GREEK  LADY 3 

THE  ROMAN  LADY 39 

THE  LADY  ABBESS 69 

THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE 106 

THE  LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE 158 

THE  LADY  OF  THE  SALON 211 

THE  LADY  OF  THE  BLUE  STOCKINGS 247 

THE  LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES  282 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Princesse  de  Conde  as  Diana Frontispiece 

FACING  PACK 

The  lady  weaving 7 

"When  she  was  of  marriageable  age" 10 

The    Lemnian    Athene 16 

"Sometimes  she  springs  upon  a  horse  and  fights  with  man"  .  19 

"A  stately  woman,  both  gentle  and  dread  " 30 

The    aspiring    lady 35 

"The  pretty  women  in  the  street" 38 

Pericles  begs  Athene  to  be  ladylike 38 

Agrippina 46 

Livia 51 

Faustina 62 

The    Syon    cope 85 

Rilindis,   Abbess   of  Hohenburg 92 

The  Donjon  of  Provins 108 

The  simple  Bliant 115 

The   Bliant   with   girdle 115 

The  lady  as   physician 126 

Lodovico  Sforza,  Beatrice  d'Este  and  their  sons  kneeling  be- 
fore the  Virgin 165 

La   Belle  Jardiniere 172 

Sacred   and   profane   love 181 

Margaret,   Queen  of   Navarre 188 

Madame  Du  Deffand  and  the  Duchesse  de  Choiseul  .     .     .231 

Julie  de   Lespinasse 234 

L'Assemblee   au    Salon 240 

Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu 261 

Mrs.  Thrale 268 

Mrs.  Hannah  More 277 

Mount   Vernon   in    1802 284 


INTRODUCTION 

The  lady  is  proverbial  for  her  skill  in  eluding 
definition,  and  it  is  far  from  the  intention  of  the 
writer  to  profess  to  say  what  she  is  in  essence. 
For  the  purpose  of  the  present  discussion  she  may 
be  described  merely  as  the  female  of  the  favoured 
social  class.  The  sketches  in  this  volume  aim  to 
suggest  in  outline  the  theories  that  various  typi- 
cal societies  have  entertained  of  the  lady;  to 
note  the  changing  ideals  that  she  has  from  time 
to  time  proposed  to  herself;  to  show  in  some 
measure  what  her  daily  life  has  been  like,  what 
sort  of  education  she  has  had,  what  sort  of  man 
she  has  preferred  to  marry;  in  short,  what  man- 
ner of  terms  she  has  contrived  to  make  with  the 
very  special  conditions  of  her  existence.  Such 
an  attempt,  like  every  other  inquiry  into  the 
history  of  European  ideas,  must  begin  with  an 
examination  of  the  Greeks.  The  lover  of 
Greek  literature  knows  it  to  be  full  of  the  por- 
traits of  strong  and  graceful  women  who  were 
also  great  ladies.  On  the  other  hand  the  stu- 
dent of  Greek  history  is  aware  that  during  the 
great  period  of  the  bloom  of  Athens  the  women 

vii 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

of  the  upper  classes  were  in  eclipse.  They  were 
reduced  to  the  condition  commended  by  Lord 
Byron  in  the  passage  made  famous  by  Schopen- 
hauer's approving  citation:  "Thought  of  the 
state  of  women  under  the  ancient  Greeks — con- 
venient enough.  Present  state,  a  remnant  of 
the  barbarism  of  the  chivalric  and  the  feudal 
ages — artificial  and  unnatural.  They  ought 
to  mind  home — and  be  well  fed  and  clothed — 
but  not  mixed  in  society.  Well  educated  too, 
in  religion — but  to  read  neither  poetry  nor 
politics — nothing  but  books  of  piety  and  cook- 
ery. Music — drawing — dancing — also  a  little 
gardening  and  ploughing  now  and  then.  I  have 
seen  them  mending  the  roads  in  Epirus  with 
good  success.  Why  not,  as  well  as  hay-making 
and  milking?" 

The  difference  between  the  feminism  of  the 
Greek  in  literature,  art  and  social  science,  and 
his  anti-feminist  practice  cannot  be  explained 
away,  but  a  near  view  of  some  of  its  aspects 
throws  light  both  forward  and  backward  upon 
the  history  of  the  lady.  At  Rome  she  becomes 
thoroughly  intelligible  to  us.  The  society  in 
which  she  lived  there  is  very  similar  in  essen- 
tials to  that  of  our  own  day.  We  see  the  Roman 
lady  helping  to  evolve  a  manner  of  life  so 
familiar  now  that  it  is  difficult  to  think  it  began 
so  relatively  late  in  the  history  of  Europe  and 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

is  not  the  way  people  have  always  lived.  But 
if  it  is  hard  to  realise  the  novelty  in  Roman 
times  of  a  free,  luxurious,  mixed  society  in  a 
great  centre,  it  is  even  harder  to  picture  its 
eclipse.  The  dark  age  put  the  lady  back  where 
Homer  knew  her;  instead  of  a  social  creature 
she  became  again  a  lonely  one,  supported  by 
the  strong  hand,  kept  safe  from  her  enemies 
behind  thick  walls,  and,  as  the  price  of  safety, 
having  but  few  friends.  We  have  glimpses  in 
Greek  tradition  of  the  lady  in  insurrection,  refus- 
ing the  restraint  of  the  patriarchal  family.  In 
the  dark  age  the  insurgent  Germanic  lady  makes 
her  appearance,  and  by  the  oddest  of  paradoxes 
finds  freedom  in  the  cloister.  The  lady  abbess 
is  in  some  sort  the  descendant  of  the  amazon. 

The  dying-out  of  violence  and  the  consequent 
increase  of  comfort  in  private  life,  brought  the 
lady  once  more  into  the  stream  of  human  inter- 
course. The  movement  called  the  Renaissance 
valued  her  as  the  most  precious  object  of  art,  the 
chosen  vessel  of  that  visible  beauty  which  men 
deemed  divine.  As  conventional  social  life  was 
organised  in  the  sixteenth,  the  seventeenth  and 
the  eighteenth  centuries,  the  lady's  position 
became  one  of  very  great  strength,  reaching  its 
climax  in  the  career  of  the  saloniere.  The  great 
social  changes  that  began  to  prevail  at  the  end 
of  the  eighteenth  century  had  a  corresponding 


x  INTRODUCTION 

effect  on  the  status  of  the  lady  and  their  work 
is  not  yet  complete.  In  the  United  States 
during  the  two  generations  preceding  the  war 
for  the  union,  the  Slave  States  furnished  the 
background  for  perhaps  the  last  example  the 
world  will  see  on  a  large  scale  of  the  feudal  lady. 
But  the  typical  lady  everywhere  tends  to  the 
feudal  habit  of  mind.  In  contemporary  society 
she  is  an  archaism,  and  can  hardly  understand 
herself  unless  she  knows  her  own  history. 

Every  discussion  of  the  status  of  woman  is 
complicated  by  the  existence  of  the  lady.  She 
overshadows  the  rest  of  her  sex.  The  gentle- 
man has  never  been  an  analogous  phenomenon, 
for  even  in  countries  and  times  where  he  has 
occupied  the  centre  of  the  stage  he  has  done  so 
chiefly  by  virtue  of  his  qualities  as  a  man.  A 
line  of  gentlemen  always  implies  a  man  as  its 
origin,  and  cannot  indeed  perpetuate  itself  for 
long  without  at  least  occasional  lapses  into  man- 
hood. Moreover  the  gentleman,  in  the  worst 
sense  of  the  term,  is  numerically  negligible. 
The  lady,  on  the  other  hand,  has  until  lately 
very  nearly  covered  the  surface  of  womanhood. 
She  even  occurs  in  great  numbers  in  societies 
where  the  gentleman  is  an  exception;  and  in 
societies  like  the  feudal  where  ladies  and  gentle- 
men are  usually  found  in  pairs,  she  soars  so  far 
above  her  mate  in  the  development  of  the  qual- 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

ities  they  have  in  common  that  he  sinks  back 
relatively  into  the  plane  of  ordinary  humanity. 
She  is  immediately  recognised  by  everyone  when 
any  social  spectrum  is  analysed.  She  is  an 
anomaly  to  which  the  western  nations  of  this 
planet  have  grown  accustomed  but  which  would 
require  a  great  deal  of  explanation  before  a 
Martian  could  understand  her.  Economically 
she  is  supported  by  the  toil  of  others ;  but  while 
this  is  equally  true  of  other  classes  of  society, 
the  oddity  in  her  case  consists  in  the  acquiescence 
of  those  most  concerned.  The  lady  herself  feels 
no  uneasiness  in  her  equivocal  situation,  and  the 
toilers  who  support  her  do  so  with  enthusiasm. 
She  is  not  a  producer;  in  most  communities  pro- 
ductive labour  is  by  consent  unladylike.  On 
the  other  hand  she  is  the  heaviest  of  consumers, 
and  theorists  have  not  been  wanting  to  maintain 
that  the  more  she  spends  the  better  off  society  is. 
In  aristocratic  societies  she  is  required  for  dy- 
nastic reasons  to  produce  offspring,  but  in  dem- 
ocratic societies  even  this  demand  is  often 
waived.  Under  the  law  she  is  a  privileged 
character.  If  it  is  difficult  to  hang  a  gentleman- 
murderer,  it  is  virtually  impossible  to  hang  a 
lady.  Plays  like  The  Doll's  House  and  The 
Thief  show  how  clearly  the  lady-forger  or  burg- 
lar should  be  differentiated  from  other  criminals. 
Socially  she  is  in  general  the  product  and  the 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

beneficiary  of  monogamy;  under  this  system  her 
prestige  is  created  by  the  existence  of  great 
numbers  of  less  happy  competitors  who  present 
to  her  the  same  hopeless  problem  as  the  stoker 
on  the  liner  presents  to  the  saloon-passenger. 
If  the  traveller  is  imaginative,  the  smoker  is  a 
burden  on  his  mind.  But  after  all,  how  are 
saloon-passengers  to  exist  if  the  stoker  does  not? 
Similarly  the  lady  reasons  about  her  sisters  five 
decks  below.  There  have  been  times  when  the 
primary  social  requirement  has  apparently  been 
waived;  it  seems  difficult,  for  instance,  so  to 
classify  the  lady  as  to  exclude  Aspasia  and 
Louise  de  la  Valliere.  Nevertheless  the  true 
lady  is  in  theory  either  a  virgin  or  a  lawful  wife. 
Religion  has  given  the  lady  perhaps  her  strong- 
est hold.  Historically  it  is  the  source  of  much 
of  her  prestige,  and  it  has  at  times  helped  her  to 
break  her  tabu  and  revert  to  womanhood.  Her 
roots  are  nourished  by  its  good  soil  and  its  bad. 
Enthusiasm,  mysticism,  renunciation,  find  her 
ready.  On  the  other  hand  the  anti-social  forces 
of  religion  are  embodied  in  her;  she  can  renounce 
the  world  more  easily  than  she  can  identify  her- 
self with  it.  A  lady  may  become  a  nun  in  the 
strictest  and  poorest  order  without  altering 
her  view  of  life,  without  the  moral  convulsion, 
the  destruction  of  false  ideas,  the  birth  of  char- 
acter that  would  be  the  preliminary  steps  toward 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

becoming  an  efficient  stenographer.  Senti- 
mentally the  lady  has  established  herself  as  the 
criterion  of  a  community's  civilisation.  Very 
dear  to  her  is  the  observance  that  hedges  her 
about.  In  some  subtle  way  it  is  so  bound  up 
with  her  self-respect  and  with  her  respect  for 
the  man  who  maintains  it,  that  life  would  hardly 
be  sweet  to  her  without  it.  When  it  is  flatly  put 
to  her  that  she  cannot  become  a  human  being 
and  yet  retain  her  privileges  as  a  non-combatant, 
she  often  enough  decides  for  etiquette. 

The  product  of  many  cross-impulses,  exempt 
apparently  in  many  cases  from  the  action  of 
economic  law,  of  natural  law  and  of  the  law  of 
the  land,  the  lady  is  almost  the  only  picturesque 
survival  in  a  social  order  which  tends  less  and 
less  to  tolerate  the  exceptional.  Her  history  is 
distinct  from  that  of  woman  though  sometimes 
advancing  by  means  of  it,  as  a  railway  may  help 
itself  from  one  point  to  another  by  leasing  an 
independent  line.  At  all  striking  periods  of 
social  development  her  status  has  its  signifi- 
cance. In  the  age-long  war  between  men  and 
women,  she  is  a  hostage  in  the  enemy's  camp. 
Her  fortunes  do  not  rise  and  fall  with  those  of 
women  but  with  those  of  men. 

It  seems  pretty  plain  from  the  accounts  given 
us  by  the  anthropologists  of  the  ancient  history 
of  our  race  that  the  gentleman  appeared  far 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

earlier  than  the  lady.  Indeed  the  first  division 
into  social  classes  took  place  when  the  savage 
male  captured  a  woman  to  work  for  him.  In 
view  of  the  subsequent  career  of  the  lady,  it  is 
entertaining  to  note  that  she  was  for  unnum- 
bered ages  submerged  with  all  other  women  in 
the  first  menial  and  industrial  class.  If  to-day 
her  husband  toils  that  she  may  be  idle,  there 
was  a  time  when  the  relation  was  reversed.  The 
first  systematic  leisure,  we  are  told,  was  achieved 
by  the  man  who  discovered  that  the  woman's 
occasional  preoccupation  with  maternity  gave 
him  a  chance  to  bring  her  into  subjection. 
From  that  day  he  reserved  himself  for  the  tasks 
more  congenial  to  his  physique  and  his  tempera- 
ment,— pleasurable  and  exciting  tasks,  which 
soon  became  honourable  since  they  were  the 
badge  of  a  privileged  class.  These  tasks  were 
such  as  befitted  the  stronger,  war  and  the  chase, 
government  and  the  chief  offices  of  religion. 
To  women  was  left  all  the  work  from  which 
modern  industrialism  is  derived,  the  patient, 
monotonous,  undistinguished  manipulation  of 
nature  that  we  call  production.  Of  course  the 
chase  was  in  its  time  productive  too,  when  it  was 
an  essential  contribution  to  the  support  of  the 
group.  But  with  changed  economic  conditions 
its  productive  character  faded  out.  It  remained 


INTRODUCTION  xv 

a  gentlemanly  occupation  by  virtue  of  its  pleas- 
urable aspect,  but  it  has  left  no  derivative  in 
modern  industry.  If  anyone  fancies  that  the 
trade  of  the  butcher  represents  the  hunter's 
occupation,  he  must  remember  that  the  butcher 
of  barbarism  was  the  woman.  Often  the  man 
would  not  even  bring  the  game  to  camp ;  when 
it  was  slain  his  work  was  done,  and  the  woman 
came  out  to  drag  it  home  or  to  dismember  it 
where  it  lay. 

The  wise  men  who  know  about  these  things 
seem  inclined  at  present  to  allow  us  to  think  that 
the  first  savage  woman  ranged  free  with  her  cubs, 
killing  for  them  and  holding  her  own  against 
man  and  beast.  She  was  no  Artemis;  her  legs 
were  short,  her  arms  were  long,  and  her  body  was 
hairy.  But  she  had  a  sound  social  position. 
Surviving  in  many  places  among  the  superim- 
posed institutions  of  man-controlled  society, 
there  are  traces  of  the  early  system  under  which 
the  wife  was  not  the  husband's  property,  and 
under  which  the  maternal  household  was  the 
social  unit.  The  child  belonged  to  the  mother 
and  took  his  name  from  her.  Marriage  was  a 
flexible  arrangement,  terminable  at  the  woman's 
will  as  well  as  at  the  man's.  The  permanent 
thing  was  the  tie  between  the  mother  and  her 
children  which  was  the  first  social  bond  and 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

gave  rise  to  curious  forms  of  group  organisa- 
tion and  to  institutions  that  survived  into  his- 
toric times. 

But  by  degrees  the  man  took  possession. 
Perhaps  the  ownership  of  the  husband  in  the 
wife  and  the  children  known  as  the  patriarchal 
or  proprietary  family,  was  the  result  of  a  gradual 
shift  from  more  or  less  peaceful  savagery  to  the 
fighting-stage  as  involving  wife-capture;  and 
wife-capture  in  its  turn  made  the  domestic  sub- 
ordination of  even  the  women  of  the  man's  own 
group  seem  right  and  fitting  to  all  concerned. 
Perhaps  on  the  other  hand  the  early  woman  was 
undone  simply  by  the  inevitable  working  of  the 
maternal  instinct.  This  led  her  to  build  a  shel- 
ter for  the  child,  to  keep  a  fire,  to  experiment 
with  vegetable  foods  that  she  might  not  have  to 
leave  her  nest  and  range  too  far  afield.  The 
early  home  of  the  mother  and  child  became  at- 
tractive to  the  man.  It  was  a  fixed  point  where 
he  knew  he  could  find  shelter  and  food.  When 
maternity  had  gone  so  far  as  to  make  woman 
synonymous  with  both  superior  comfort  and 
inferior  physique,  the  man  moved  in  and  made 
himself  master.  At  any  rate  by  fair  means  or 
foul  two  great  human  institutions  were  appar- 
ently inaugurated  together,  proprietary  mar- 
riage and  the  division  of  society  into  masters  and 
servants. 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

At  all  events  the  woman's  enforced  speciali- 
sation of  function  by  degrees  affected  her  both 
physically  and  psychologically.  Her  stature, 
weight  and  muscular  strength  became  ever  more 
noticeably  less  than  those  of  the  man,  and  to  his 
explosive  mental  action  she  opposed  her  illim- 
itable patience.  As  the  ground  of  gentility 
came  to  lie  more  and  more  in  superior  prowess, 
exerted  gradually  not  only  upon  women  but 
upon  the  weaker  men,  it  must  have  seemed  to 
the  sociologists  of  early  barbarism  that  woman 
with  her  confessed  and  growing  physical  infe- 
riority was  debarred  forever  from  the  gentle 
class.  She  had  it  is  true  certain  moral  holds 
upon  the  veneration  of  the  group,  based  chiefly 
on  her  relation  to  the  occult  and  her  mysterious 
connection  with  nature  as  the  source  of  life.  And 
when  the  gentility  of  the  strong  man  became 
hereditary,  his  daughter  had  a  theoretical  share 
in  it.  But  these  psychological  claims  to  social 
distinction  for  the  woman  were  always  checked 
by  the  uncontrovertible  fact  of  physical  subjec- 
tion. There  was  no  thinkable  way  in  which  the 
woman  could  emancipate  herself ;  much  less  was 
there  a  way  in  which  she  could  conquer  for 
herself  a  foothold  in  the  privileged  class  of  men. 
It  must  have  seemed  to  her  then  that  the  only 
escape  from  drudgery,  which  after  all  was 
within  her  strength,  lay  through  violence  and 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

exploit  which  by  this  time  were  beyond  it. 
Until  changing  economic  conditions  made  the 
thing  actually  happen,  struggling  early  society 
could  hardly  have  guessed  that  woman's  road 
to  gentility  would  lie  through  doing  nothing 
at  all. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  note  if  we  could  the 
stages  by  which,  through  the  accumulation  of 
property  and  through  the  man's  aesthetic  devel- 
opment and  his  snobbish  impulses  acting  in  har- 
mony, he  came  to  feel  that  it  was  more  desirable 
to  have  an  idle  than  a  working  wife.  The  idle 
wife  ranked  with  the  ornamentally  wrought 
weapon  and  with  the  splendid  offering  to  the 
gods  as  a  measure  of  the  man's  power  to  waste, 
and  therefore  his  superiority  over  other  men. 
Her  idleness  did  not  come  all  at  once.  One  by 
one  the  more  arduous  tasks  were  dropped  that 
made  her  less  constant  or  less  agreeable  in  un- 
remitting personal  attendance  on  her  lord. 
The  work  that  remained  was  generally  such  as 
could  be  performed  within  the  house.  Here  we 
find  her  when  history  dawns,  a  complete  lady, 
presiding  over  inferior  wives  and  slaves,  per- 
forming work  herself,  for  the  spirit  of  work- 
manship is  ineradicable  within  her,  but  tending 
to  produce  by  preference  the  useless  for  the  sake 
of  its  social  and  economic  significance.  As  is 


INTRODUCTION  xix 

the  case  with  any  other  object  of  art,  her  use- 
lessness  is  her  use. 

It  follows  from  the  lady's  history  that  she  is 
to-day,  when  freed  from  many  of  the  old  re- 
strictions and  possessed  of  a  social  and  financial 
power  undreamed  of  by  her  originators,  a  some- 
what dangerous  element  of  society.  Her  train- 
ing and  experience  when  not  antisocial  have 
been  unsocial.  Women  in  general  have  lived  an 
individualistic  life.  As  soon  as  the  division  of 
early  labour  sent  the  man  out  to  fight  and  kept 
the  woman  in  the  house,  the  process  began 
which  taught  men  to  act  in  concert  while  women 
still  acted  singly.  The  man's  great  adventure 
of  warfare  was  undertaken  shoulder  to  shoul- 
der with  his  fellows,  while  the  rumble  of 
the  tam-tam  thrilled  his  nerves  with  the  collect- 
ive motive  of  the  group.  The  woman's  great 
adventure  of  maternity  had  to  be  faced  in  cold 
blood  by  each  woman  for  herself.  The  man's 
exploit  resulted  in  loot  to  be  divided  in  some 
manner  recognised  as  equitable,  thus  teaching 
him  a  further  lesson  in  social  life.  The  woman's 
exploit  resulted  in  placing  in  her  arms  a  little 
extension  of  her  ego  for  which  she  was  fiercely 
ready  to  defy  every  social  law.  Maternity  is 
on  the  face  of  it  an  unsocial  experience.  The 
selfishness  that  a  woman  has  learned  to  stifle  or 


xx  INTRODUCTION 

to  dissemble  where  she  alone  is  concerned, 
blooms  freely  and  unashamed  on  behalf  of  her 
offspring.  The  world  at  large,  which  may  have 
made  some  appeal  to  the  sympathies  of  the  dis- 
interested woman,  become,  to  the  mother  chiefly 
a  source  of  contagious  disease  and  objectionable 
language.  The  man's  fighting  instinct  can  be 
readily  utilised  in  the  form  of  sports  and  games 
to  develop  in  boys  the  sense  of  solidarity;  the 
little  girl's  doll  serves  no  such  social  end.  The 
women  of  the  working-classes  have  been  saved 
by  their  work  itself,  which  has  finally  carried 
them  out  of  the  house  where  it  kept  them 
so  long.  In  the  shop  and  the  factory  they  have 
learned  what  the  nursery  can  never  teach.  But 
the  lady  has  had  no  social  training  whatever; 
the  noticeable  weakness  of  her  play  at  bridge 
is  the  tendency  to  work  for  her  own  hand. 
Being  surrounded  by  soft  observance  she  has 
not  so  much  as  learned  the  art  of  temperate 
debate.  With  an  excellent  heart  and  the  best 
intentions  but  with  her  inevitable  limitations, 
the  lady  seems  about  to  undertake  the  champion- 
ship of  a  view  of  society  to  which  her  very  ex- 
istence is  uncongenial. 

As  the  gentleman  decays,  the  lady  survives  as 
the  strongest  evidence  of  his  former  predomi- 
nance. Where  he  set  her,  there  she  stays.  One 
after  another  the  fabrics  that  supported  her  have 


INTRODUCTION  xxi 

tottered,  but  she  remains,  adapting  herself  to 
each  new  set  of  circumstances  as  it  arises.  It 
is  possible  that  an  advancing  social  sentiment 
will  extinguish  her  altogether,  but  she  can  never 
be  forgotten. 


THE  LADY 


THE   LADY 


THE  GREEK  LADY 

"Phidias  supported  the  statue  of  Aphrodite  at  Elis  upon  a 
tortoise  to  signify  the  protection  necessary  for  maidens  and  the 
homekeeping  silence  that  is  becoming  to  married  women." — 
PLUTAKCH,  "Concerning  Isis  and  Osiris." 


UNDER  the  stress  of  sharp  military  com- 
petition the  Greeks  developed  in  the 
long  run  the  conventional  type  of  lady, 
who  is  distinguished  from  women  at  large  by  the 
number  of  things  she  may  not  do.  It  was 
necessary  to  the  unstable  equilibrium  of  a  Greek 
state  that  she  should  be  cut  down  to  her  lowest 
economic  terms.  She  could  not  be  dispensed 
with  altogether  for  she  was  the  necessary 
mechanism  for  producing  legitimate  heirs  and 
could  conveniently  combine  with  this  function 
the  direction  and  management  of  her  husband's 
house.  To  these  activities  and  to  her  religious 
duties  her  life  was  restricted.  She  hardly 

3 


4  THE  LADY 

appears  in  history.  There  is  not  a  woman  in 
politics  in  Athens  from  beginning  to  end. 
Herodotus'  narrative  is  sprinkled  with  love 
stories  when  he  treats  of  other  states,  but  there 
is  no  trace  of  the  sentimental  motive  in  the 
dealings  of  Athens.  The  suppression  of  the 
woman  of  the  upper  class  as  an  element  of 
society  is  perhaps  part  of  the  price  paid  for  the 
greatness  of  the  city — the  result  of  the  working 
of  social  laws  which  probably  could  not  at  the 
time  and  under  the  conditions  be  resisted.  The 
world  has  never  yet  seen  a  society  that  could 
afford  to  take  care  of  all  its  members.  The  sav- 
age who  kills  his  grandfather  in  the  interests  of 
the  tribe  starts  with  disgust  from  the  missionary 
who  lets  fall  that  in  Europe  there  are  old  gen- 
tlemen living  in  plenty  while  children  starve. 
The  inevitability  of  these  sacrifices  is  proved  by 
the  general  acquiescence  of  the  victim.  The  old 
woman  who  is  rescued  by  the  missionaries 
escapes  in  the  night  and  swims  back  to  die  as 
her  clan  morality  requires.  The  poor  in  Europe 
have  for  centuries,  sometimes  with  enthusiasm, 
acquiesced  in  the  existence  of  the  rich.  And 
we  have  no  record  of  attempted  mutiny  by  the 
gentlewomen  of  Athens.  The  tabu  separating 
them  from  the  slave,  the  alien  and  the  courtesan 
had  its  full  mental  effect,  and  they  were  made 
to  cling  to  their  doubtful  privilege  by  the  same 


THE  GREEK  LADY  5 

psychic  treatment  as  was  used  by  Tom  Sawyer 
to  induce  his  playmates  to  whitewash  the  fence. 

Ischomachos  was  a  priggish  young  Athenian 
of  good  social  position  whom  Xenophon  has 
immortalised  for  us.  When  he  married  he 
made  up  his  mind  to  educate  his  wife.  She 
was  a  girl  of  fifteen,  as  brides  often  were  in 
Athens,  and,  as  he  told  Socrates,  the  greatest 
pains  had  been  taken  with  her  by  her  parents  so 
that  she  might  see  as  little  as  possible,  hear  as 
little  as  possib.le  and  ask  the  fewest  possible 
questions.  Ischomachos  had  a  well-ordered 
mind.  When  the  wife  had  been  broken  in  and 
had  grown  used  to  her  husband's  hand  (the 
phrases  are  his  own),  he  laid  down  for  her  the 
proposition  that  they  had  pooled  their  goods 
and  formed  a  partnership  for  two  purposes:  to 
produce  children  and  to  keep  house.  The 
question  of  the  rearing  of  children  he  postponed 
until  they  should  have  some,  but  in  regard  to 
the  house  he  defined  very  clearly  their  mutual 
relations.  God  and  custom,  he  said,  concurred 
in  delimiting  these. 

Men  are  strong,  therefore  they  must  go  out  to 
contend  with  the  elements  and,  if  need  be,  with 
other  men  to  get  a  living  for  their  families. 
Women  are  physically  weak,  therefore  God 
meant  them  to  live  in  the  house.  They  are 
timid  while  men  are  bold;  they  must  therefore 


6  THE  LADY 

be  stewards  while  men  are  acquirers.  Women 
are  naturally  fonder  of  babies  than  men  are;  by 
this  discrimination  God  beckons  women  to  the 
nursery.  Having  apparently  won  his  child- 
wife's  consent  to  this  familiar  substitution  of 
effect  for  cause,  he  explained  her  duties  in  de- 
tail. She  was  to  organise  the  slaves,  selecting 
some  for  out-door  work,  some  for  the  house. 
She  was  to  receive  and  store  the  supplies  as  they 
came  in  from  the  farm.  Another  department 
of  her  work  was  clothing  the  family.  Every 
step  from  the  reception  of  the  raw  wool  to  the 
turning  out  of  the  finished  garment  was  to  be 
taken  under  her  eye.  And  there  was  one  duty 
which  the  husband  feared  would  be  very  dis- 
agreeable,— the  care  of  any  slave  that  might  fall 
ill.  But  to  this  the  little  newly-tamed  wife 
made  a  charming  answer,  an  answer  that  casts 
forward  many  centuries  to  Elizabeth  of 
Hungary  and  the  frame  of  mind  that  we  think 
of  as  "Christian."  "That  will  be  the  pleasant- 
est  task  of  all,"  she  said,  "if  it  will  make  them 
fonder  of  me." 

One  day  Ischomachos  came  in  and  asked  for 
something  which  his  wife,  blushing  for  her 
incompetence,  could  not  furnish  him.  He 
handsomely  took  the  blame  upon  himself  for  not 
having  set  his  goods  in  order  before  handing 
them  over  to  her,  and  straightway  gave  her  a 


The  lady  weaving. 
From  a  vase  painting  in  the  Museum  at  Athens. 


THE  GREEK  LADY  7 

lecture  on  the  beauty  of  system.  The  army,  the 
dance,  the  farm,  the  ship,  all  are  adduced  to 
prove  the  use  and  beauty  of  "a  place  for  every- 
thing and  everything  in  its  place."  Having 
completed  his  theoretical  treatment  of  the 
subject,  Ischomachos  went  over  her  new 
domain  with  his  wife  to  start  her  right,  and  if 
we  want  to  see  just  what  her  surroundings  were 
we  cannot  do  better  than  to  follow  his  narrative. 
"My  house,"  he  said  to  Socrates,  "is  a  plain 
one,  built  with  an  eye  to  convenience  alone. 
The  character  of  each  room  determines  its  con- 
tents. Thus,  our  bedchamber  is  secure  against 
thieves,  therefore  the  best  rugs  and  furniture  are 
kept  there.  The  dry  part  of  the  attic  is  the 
place  for  the  food-stuffs,  the  cold  part  for  wine, 
while  the  light  rooms  are  the  place  for  goods 
and  work  that  need  light.  I  pointed  out  to  my 
wife  that  the  beauty  of  the  living-rooms  lay  in 
their  exposure,  which  made  them  sunny  in 
winter  and  shady  in  summer.  Then  I  showed 
her  the  women's  quarters,  separated  by  a  bolted 
door  from  those  of  the  men.  Next  we  pro- 
ceeded to  classify  the  gear.  First  we  put 
together  everything  that  had  to  do  with  the  sac- 
rifices. Then  we  grouped  the  maids'  best 
clothes,  the  men's  best  clothes  and  their  soldier 
outfits,  the  maids'  bedding,  the  men's  bedding, 
the  maids'  shoes  and  the  men's  shoes.  We  put 


8  THE  LADY 

weapons  in  one  group  and  classified  under  differ- 
ent heads  the  tools  for  wool-working,  baking, 
cooking,  care  of  the  bath  and  of  the  table  and 
so  on.  Then  we  made  a  cross-classification  of 
things  used  every  day  and  things  used  on  holi- 
days only.  Next  we  set  aside  from  the  stores 
sufficient  provision  for  a  month,  and  also  what 
we  calculated  would  last  a  year.  That  is  the 
only  way  to  keep  your  supplies  from  running 
out  before  you  know  it.  After  that  we  put 
everything  in  its  appropriate  place,  summoned 
the  servants,  explained  our  system  to  them  and 
made  each  one  responsible  for  the  safety  of  each 
article  needed  in  his  daily  work  and  for  restora- 
tion after  use  to  its  proper  place.  Articles  used 
only  occasionally  we  put  in  charge  of  the  house- 
keeper with  a  written  inventory.  We  showed 
her  where  they  were  kept  and  instructed  her  to 
give  them  out  to  the  servants  when  necessary  and 
to  see  that  they  were  all  put  back  again. 

"When  all  these  arrangements  were  made,'* 
Ischomachos  continued,  "I  told  my  wife  that 
good  laws  will  not  keep  a  state  in  order  unless 
they  are  enforced1^  and  that  she  as  the  chief 
executive  officer  under  our  constitution  must 
contrive  by  rewards  and  punishments  that  law 
should  prevail  in  our  house.  By  way  of  apology 
for  laying  upon  her  so  many  troublesome  duties, 
I  bade  her  observe  that  we  cannot  reasonably 


THE  GREEK  LADY  9 

expect  servants  spontaneously  to  be  careful  of 
the  master's  goods,  since  they  have  no  interest 
in  being  so;  the  owner  is  the  one  who  must  take 
trouble  to  preserve  his  property.  To  this  my 
wife  replied  that  it  was  as  natural  to  a  woman 
to  look  after  her  belongings  as  to  look  after  her 
children,  and  that  I  should  have  given  her  a 
more  difficult  task  if  I  had  bidden  her  give  no 
heed  to  these  matters." 

Socrates  liked  this.  "By  Hera,"  he  cried, 
"your  wife  reasons  like  a  man!" 

Ischomachos  was  emboldened  to  further  con- 
fidences. "One  day  I  saw  her  with  a  lot  of 
powder  on  her  face  to  make  her  look  whiter  and 
a  lot  of  rouge  to  make  her  look  redder  and  high- 
heeled  shoes  to  make  her  look  taller.  I  pointed 
out  to  her  in  the  first  place  that  she  was  doing 
as  dishonourable  a  thing  in  trying  to  deceive  me 
about  her  looks  as  I  should  have  done  if  I  had 
tried  to  deceive  her  about  my  property.  And 
then  I  remarked  that  though  her  arts  might 
impose  upon  others,  they  could  not  upon  me 
who  saw  her  at  all  times.  I  was  sure  to  catch 
her  early  in  the  morning  before  they  had  been 
applied,  or  tears  would  betray  them,  or  perspira- 
tion, or  the  bath." 

The  little  lady  seems  to  have  taken  this  also 
in  good  part,  for  she  asked  her  husband  how  she 
should  gain  a  genuine  bloom  if  she  must  give 


io  THE  LADY 

up  the  semblance  of  it,  and  he  gave  her  as  sound 
advice  as  could  be  founded  on  the  assumption 
that  in  the  divine  scheme  whereby  men  and 
women  complement  each  other,  oxygen  (as 
Professor  Ward  says)  is  for  men  and  carbon 
dioxide  for  women.  "I  told  her  not  to  be 
forever  sitting  about  like  a  slave  girl  but  to  stand 
at  the  loom,  teaching  what  she  knew  and  learn- 
ing what  she  did  not.  I  advised  her  to  look  on 
at  the  breadmaking  and  stand  by  while  the 
housekeeper  dealt  out  the  supplies  and  go  about 
inspecting  everything.  Thus  she  could  prac- 
tice her  profession  and  take  a  walk  at  the  same 
time.  I  added  that  excellent  exercise  could  be 
had  by  making  beds  and  kneading  dough." 

This  passage  from  the  CEconomicus  is  the 
most  substantial  document  we  have  for  the 
Athenian  lady  of  the  great  period,  but  we  can 
gather  from  scattered  references  a  good  deal  of 
information,  chiefly  negative,  to  fill  out  the  story 
of  her  life.  She  was  received  at  birth  with  less 
enthusiasm  than  a  boy-baby,  for  the  question  of 
her  dowry  began  at  once  to  weigh  upon  her  par- 
ents. For  aught  we  know,  however,  she  had  the 
same  love  and  care  and  playthings  as  her  brothers 
for  the  first  few  years  of  her  life.  But  when  the 
boys  were  handed  over  to  the  pedagogue  and 
the  schoolmaster,  her  way  and  theirs  diverged 
forever.  We  do  not  know  that  she  received  any 


"When  she  was  of  marriageable  age." 
Relief  from  the  Theatre   of   Dionysius,   Athens,   Fourth  centun^B.^ C. ^ 


THE  GREEK  LADY  ir 

systematic  education.  Doubtless  she  could 
sometimes  read  and  write ;  she  learned  from  her 
mother  a  certain  amount  of  household  manage- 
ment and  labour,  and  religious  instruction  was 
gilded  for  her  by  association  with  her  only 
outings.  When  she  was  of  marriageable  age 
her  parents  picked  out  for  her  as  desirable  a 
young  man  as  the  dowry  would  fetch.  She  was 
betrothed  with  great  ceremony,  married  with 
less,  and  lived  as  happily  thereafter  as  her  hus- 
band permitted.  She  was  a  perpetual  minor  in 
the  eye  of  the  law.  Before  marriage  her  father 
or  nearest  male  relative  was  her  guardian ;  after 
marriage,  her  husband.  Her  dowry  passed  into 
her  husband's  hands,  subject  to  the  provision 
that  if  he  divorced  her  he  must  pay  it  back. 
Theorists  considered  carefully  what  the  amount 
of  the  ideal  dowry  should  be ; — enough  to  secure 
the  dignity  of  the  wife's  position,  but  not  so 
much  as  to  tie  the  husband's  hands.  She  seldom 
left  the  house,  never  unattended  by  a  female 
slave.  At  the  religious  festivals  from  which 
men  were  excluded  she  mingled  freely  with 
other  women,  but  there  was  apparently  little  or 
no  visiting  from  house  to  house.  She  was 
visible  to  the  public  only  when  from  time  to 
time  she  took  part  in  a  general  religious  cere- 
mony or  watched  a  pious  procession.  The 
peasant-women  worked  with  their  fellows  in 


12  THE  LADY 

the  fields,  the  market-women  chattered  in  the 
agora,  the  courtesans  came  and  went  as  they 
would  and  sharpened  their  wits  by  talk  with  all 
sorts  of  people.  But  the  lady  had  no  society 
but  that  of  her  slaves.  She  had  social  relations 
with  no  freeman  save  those  of  her  family.  If 
her  husband  dined  alone  at  home  she  shared 
his  meal,  but  if  he  had  guests  she  was  unseen. 
He  lived  mostly  away  from  home  in  a  man's 
world  of  a  very  high  type.  His  life  was  car- 
ried on  in  the  presence  of  magnificent  objects 
of  art  and  was  stimulated  by  the  exciting  pres- 
ence of  great  men.  Naturally  his  home  was 
not  very  amusing,  and  his  wife  seemed  pretty 
nearly  to  be  a  creature  of  a  different  species. 
But  he  was  scrupulous  in  his  respect  to  her, 
very  careful  to  use  no  unsuitable  language  in 
her  presence  and  to  maintain  her  good  opinion 
of  him.  Romantic  love  is  notoriously  an  in- 
vention of  later  times.  Some  aspects  of  it 
occur  in  Athenian  life,  but  with  different 
associations  from  those  the  words  have  for  us. 
The  tender,  unselfish  solicitude  for  the  wel- 
fare of  the  beloved  was  felt  sometimes  by  men 
for  promising  lads:  the  enthusiasm  of  passion 
was  sometimes  kindled  by  a  gifted  courtesan, 
educated  by  the  conversation  of  the  great  men 
of  her  time.  So  serious  a  person  as  Demos- 
thenes could  say,  as  a  platitude  in  a  public 


THE  GREEK  LADY  13 

address,  "We  have  courtesans  for  pleasure,  slave 
women  for  personal  service  and  wives  to  bear 
us  lawful  offspring  and  be  faithful  guardians 
of  our  houses."  "A  wife,"  said  Menander,  "is 
a  necessary  evil."  Anything  that  is  necessary 
tends  to  become  an  evil,  and  the  wife's  dynastic 
importance,  which  was  her  very  raison  d'etre, 
operated  to  her  disadvantage  as  a  source  of 
romantic  interest.  What  she  thought  of  her  lot 
we  can  only  guess;  tortoises  leave  no  memoirs. 


II 

THE  oddity  of  this  lady's  fate  is  striking. 
She  lived  in  the  house  among  a  people 
that  lived  out  of  doors.  So  just-minded 
and  scientific  a  man  as  Plato  speaks  of  women 
as  "a  race  that  are  used  to  living  out  of  the  sun- 
light." Among  a  people  who  gave  great  im- 
portance to  physical  training  she  was  advised 
to  take  her  exercise  in  bedmaking.  At  a  period 
when  the  human  spirit  was  at  its  freest  she  was 
enclosed  on  all  sides.  Art  and  thought  and 
letters  were  reaching  the  highest  development 
they  were  ever  to  know,  but  for  her  they  hardly 
existed.  All  these  contradictions,  however,  are 
intelligible  in  comparison  with  one  that  must 
immediately  strike  the  reader.  Any  one  who 


14  THE  LADY 

studies  the  literature  or  the  art  of  the  Greeks 
becomes  aware  of  the  existence  at  this  period, 
as  at  every  other  in  their  history,  of  a  deep 
seated,  omnipresent  feminism.  If  we  can 
imagine  Athens  and  its  inhabitants  revivified 
and  inspected  by  a  modern  visitor,  we  can  safely 
say  that  after  a  week's  sojourn  he  would  record 
in  his  note-book  his  strong  impression  of  the 
reverent  and  admiring  interest  taken  in  women. 
High  above  the  town  and  dominating  every 
prospect  stood  the  glorious  temple  and  awful 
likeness  of  the  hypostasis  of  womanhood  who 
was  the  unifying  spirit  of  the  land.  Beside 
the  entrance  to  the  citadel  stood  the  shrine  of 
the  same  great  power  in  her  lovely  aspect  of 
Victory.  And  in  the  adornment  of  both  these 
temples  the  physical  beauty  of  woman  was 
enthusiastically  rendered;  young,  vigorous  and 
pure,  those  marble  maids  and  matrons  would 
cause  our  traveller's  blood  to  thrill  with  envy 
of  the  land  that  held  such  women  and  thought 
of  them  so  nobly.  Wherever  he  went  he  would 
find  the  same  powerful  feminine  motive  in  art, 
sometimes  as  the  expression  of  a  profound 
sentiment  of  the  mystic  character  of  woman  and 
her  relation  to  nature,  sometimes  the  result  of 
a  sense  of  her  sheer  aesthetic  value.  She  stands 
everywhere  as  man's  equal,  Hippodamia  beside 
Pelops  and  Sterope  beside  CEnomaos.  Some- 


THE  GREEK  LADY  15 

times  she  springs  upon  a  horse  and  fights  with 
man,  nor  is  she  always  overborne.  Sex  has  not 
made  too  great  inroads  upon  her;  she  is  not 
merely  woman  but  a  human  being. 

If  our  traveller  was  so  fortunate  as  to  be 
present  at  a  theatrical  representation,  the  im- 
pression he  had  received  from  plastic  art  would 
be  reinforced.  Ten  to  one  the  play  would  deal 
with  the  psychology  or  with  the  fate  of  some 
woman,  who  was  also  a  great  lady,  the  wife  or 
the  daughter  of  a  king.  She  might  be  a  devoted 
maiden,  strong  with  the  strength  of  mind  and 
will  that  is  generally  ascribed  to  men  only. 
The  cause  for  which  she  lays  down  her  life  is 
.  not  one  of  the  popular  causes  supported  by  the 
emotion  of  the  crowd  which  makes  martyrdom 
easy;  it  is  an  idea  reasoned  out  by  herself  alone. 
She  goes  to  her  death  in  the  moral  loneliness 
which  is  the  heaviest  of  dooms.  Or  perhaps  the 
heroine  would  be  a  gentle  lady  who  dared  to 
face  the  death  her  coward  husband  shrank 
from.  Perhaps  she  would  be  a  wild-eyed 
woman  edging  her  brother's  milder  temper  for 
a  dreadful  act  of  justice  on  their  mother.  She 
might  be  the  proud  victim  of  a  hopeless  love, 
betrayed  by  her  false  confidante;  dying  at  last 
in  shame  and  desperation  she  commits  her  first 
and  only  baseness,  destroying  the  man  she 
loves.  Good  or  bad,  she  was  always  in  the 


16  THE  LADY 

problem.  If  an  exceptional  play  was  now  and 
then  written  without  a  woman  in  it,  it  but 
proved  the  rule,  just  as  Treasure  Island  and 
Dr.  Jekyll  by  their  reactionary  exclusion  of 
the  feminine  interest  prove  its  preponderance  in 
modern  fiction. 

If  it  happened  to  be  a  comedy  that  our 
imaginary  visitor  witnessed,  he  might  easily 
get  another  statement  of  the  public  interest  in 
women.  He  might  see  a  presentation  of 
society  under  the  equal  suffrage,  or  a  masterly  ap- 
plication of  the  marital  boycott  to  international 
affairs.  Women  of  contemporary  Athens  would 
be  credited  with  shrewd  wits,  political  com- 
petence, the  power  of  organisation  and  readiness 
in  debate.  He  would  note  that  it  gratified  the 
public  to  see  the  women  outwit  the  men.  If 
he  was  struck  by  the  fact  that  there  were  no 
women  in  the  audience,  he  would  explain  it 
readily  enough  by  the  extreme  freedom  of  speech 
and  action  allowed  on  the  stage. 

If  accident  or  foresight  made  our  traveler's 
visit  coincide  with  the  celebration  of  the  Greater 
Eleusinia,  he  would  see  the  whole  population 
occupied  in  the  great  religious  act  of  the  year. 
The  ideas  he  had  gained  at  school  of  the  hier- 
archy of  Olympus  with  Zeus  at  the  head  would 
crumble  before  the  evidence  of  what  was  really 
vital  in  Athenian  religioujs  life — the  cult  of  the 


JU 

s  &• 


The  Lemnian  Athene. 

Ancient  marble  copy  of  the  bronze  statue  by   Phidias,  now  in   the   Dresden 

Gallery. 

See  p.   14 


THE  GREEK  LADY  17 

Mother,  the  giver  of  life,  of  her  human  suffer- 
ings, her  divine  power  and  her  sacramental  in- 
stitutes. He  had  probably  read  in  some  text- 
book of  anthropology  that  the  first  use  for 
food  of  wild  herbs  and  seeds  and  their  subse- 
quent culture  are  due  to  primitive  woman. 
The  image  of  it  in  his  mind  would  be  some  poor 
Shoshone  squaw  with  basket  in  one  hand  and 
paddle  in  the  other,  beating  out  the  seed  of 
the  desert  grass.  But  after  he  had  for  nine 
days  and  nights  participated  with  the  Athenians 
and  the  deputations  from  other  states  in  their 
great  ritual,  the  image  would  have  changed. 
The  squaw  would  be  replaced  by  the  figure  of  a 
stately  woman,  both  gentle  and  dread,  a  very 
goddess,  yet  acquainted  with  grief.  And  with 
the  physical  life  given  by  her  to  men  he  would 
learn  to  associate  a  spiritual  life,  typified  by  the 
history  of  the  seed  and  embodied  in  the 
mysteries  of  her  service; — mysteries  of  such  a 
nature  that  partakers  in  them,  said  Isocrates, 
"have  better  hopes  concerning  death  and  all 
eternity." 

If  our  friend  had  the  best  introductions  he 
might  conceivably  be  asked  to  dine  with  Pericles. 
He  would  probably  find  a  party  of  men  only, 
who  were  forming  most  of  the  ideas  that  the 
race  were  ever  to  produce.  These  men  by  a 
happy  peculiarity  would  be  as  companionable 


i8  THE  LADY 

as  they  were  learned.  He  would  receive  a 
strong  impression  of  elevation  of  character  with- 
out any  kill-joy  Puritanism.  The  gathering 
would  be  presided  over  by  possibly  the  most 
charming  woman  the  visitor  had  ever  seen,  a 
woman  whose  breeding  and  brains  and  beauty 
equipped  her  to  practice  the  art  of  the  saloniere 
some  two  thousand  years  before  Mme.  de  Ram- 
bouillet.  And  yet  you  could  see,  when  now  and 
then  a  glance  passed  between  her  and  Pericles, 
that  her  chief  interest  lay  in  his  career  rather 
than  in  her  own.  "What  is  the  name  of 
Pericles'  wife?"  our  ingenuous  stranger  might 
ask  of  a  fellow-guest.  "Ah,  my  dear  fellow," 
the  answer  would  be,  "Aspasia  is  not  exactly  his 
wife.  She  was  born  in  Miletus,  you  know,  and 
an  Athenian  citizen  is  forbidden  by  law  to 
marry  an  alien.  So  there  they  are.  They  have 
a  child  and  live  more  correctly  than  many  mar- 
ried people.  She  is  all  the  wife  he  has  and  I 
should  not  advise  any  man  to  act  on  the  hypoth- 
esis that  she  is  anything  else."  The  visitor 
would  think  he  understood  perfectly.  "George 
Eliot,"  he  would  say  to  himself,  turning  back 
to  the  other  guests.  Very  likely  he  would  find 
them  listening  to  a  new  theory  of  Socrates, 
which  he  was  saying  he  had  heard  from  the 
wisest  person  he  knew,  a  woman,  Diotima.  The 


"Sometimes  she  springs  upon  a  horse  and  fights  with  man." 

Amazon   from  Temple   of  vEsculapius  at   Epidauros.     Fourth   century,   B.  C. 

See  p.  16 


THE  GREEK  LADY  19 

company   would   smile,    for   Diotima   was   his 
"Mrs.  Harris." 

Other  hospitalities  might  be  offered  to  our 
lucky  friend  in  the  shape  of  meetings  with  men 
at  the  gymnasia  or  other  places  of  resort,  where 
the  absence  of  women  would  not  surprise  him. 
He  might  easily  spend  a  delightful  week  in  the 
full  stream  of  Athenian  life,  noting  the  pretty 
women  in  the  street,  feeling  everywhere  the  cult 
of  womanhood,  and  reflect  only  afterward  that 
by  some  odd  coincidence  he  had  not  once  been  in 
the  same  room  with  a  woman  of  conventional 
social  position. 

Ill 

PERICLES  is  responsible  for  the  classical 
expression  of  what  the  men  of  his  time 
deemed  "ladylike."  In  the  famous  ora- 
tion attributed  to  him  by  Thucydides,  he  char- 
acterised in  eloquent  words  the  spirit  of  his 
city,  free,  joyful  and  brave,  the  most  inspiriting 
place  a  man  could  wish  to  live  in.  "And  if  I 
am  to  speak  of  womanly  virtues,  let  me  sum 
them  up  in  one  short  sentence:  To  a  woman  not 
to  show  more  weakness  than  is  natural  to  her 
sex  is  a  great  glory,  and  not  to  be  talked  about 
for  good  or  evil  among  men."  We  have  seen, 


20  THE  LADY 

however,  that  though  in  practice  the  Greeks  had 
shorn  the  lady  of  all  but  negative  qualities  and 
left  her  hardly  any  room  for  unrestrained 
action,  their  art  and  their  literature  were  never- 
theless full  of  the  tradition  of  a  lady  whose 
characteristic  was  freedom.  Despite  their  sin- 
gleness of  mind,  the  Greeks  like  all  mankind 
were  capable  of  seeing  the  better  and  following 
the  worse.  Let  us  see  how  it  happened  that  if 
all  the  ladies  they  saw  were  prisoners,  neverthe- 
less all  the  ladies  they  thought  about  were  free. 

Far  in  the  background  of  civilised  society, 
hardly  to  be  recognised  save  by  analogy  with 
backward  societies  of  our  own  day,  there  looms 
a  shadowy  vision  of  the  state  of  things  when 
women  were  in  a  very  different  relation  to 
society  from  that  which  prevails  to-day.  The 
family  in  those  times  consisted  of  mother  and 
child;  and  just  as  maternity  is  apparently  no 
drawback  in  the  long  run  to  the  fighting  power 
of  the  lioness,  we  are  at  liberty  to  think  that  it 
did  not  necessarily  result  at  once  in  the  sub- 
jection of  woman.  Even  after  her  physical 
subjection,  she  remained  for  a  time  the  pillar 
of  society.  Her  children  were  her  property 
and  through  her  they  traced  their  descent.  Her 
prestige  was  reflected  in  the  cults  of  primitive 
men,  for  early  gods  were  apt  to  be  female  and 
their  rites  to  be  conducted  by  women.  This 


THE  GREEK  LADY  21 

moment  of  equilibrium  passed  everywhere  with 
the  advance  toward  civilisation.  Each  step 
upward,  the  building  of  the  hut,  the  kindling 
of  the  fire,  the  permanent  attachment  of  the  man 
to  the  mother  and  her  child,  was  a  step  towards 
the  social  subordination  of  woman,  a  move  made 
at  her  expense  for  the  benefit  of  the  child. 
Primitive  conditions  are  generally  brought  to 
our  knowledge  with  displeasing  accessories.  It 
is  positive  pain  to  many  minds  to  think  of  a 
society  that  knew  neither  proprietary  marriage 
nor  the  metals,  and  it  was  with  many  apologies 
that  the  anthropologists  first  suggested  the  wide- 
spread occurrence  of  the  phenomenon.  Before 
the  fusion  of  races  took  place  that  produced  the 
people  whom  we  call  Greeks,  the  lands  they 
came  to  occupy  were  held  by  barbarous  folk 
whose  ways  could  not  be  altogether  eliminated 
from  the  amalgam  they  formed  with  the  in- 
vader. In  a  score  of  ways  we  can  see  how 
close  barbarism  was  to  the  Greeks.  They  drew 
as  it  were  a  magic  circle  within  which  the 
monster  could  not  come.  But  it  prowled  for- 
ever about  the  edge  of  light,  howling  and 
grimacing,  until  finally  the  spell  failed  and 
darkness  prevailed  again  in  Europe.  Within 
the  sacred  ring  the  grewsome  old  facts  were 
transformed,  not  consciously  but  by  the  genius 
of  a  people  whose  instinct  was  to  see  things  in 


22  THE  LADY 

the  best  light.  They  knew  there  was  some  good 
reason,  for  instance,  why  by  Attic  law  a  man 
might  marry  his  sister  by  the  same  father  but  not 
his  sister  by  the  same  mother.  They  knew  that 
their  genealogical  trees  had  a  way  of  running 
back  to  a  woman  as  the  first  ancestor.  Herod- 
otus in  his  day  found  Hellenic  communities 
in  which  if  you  asked  a  man  his  family  name 
he  gave  you  his  mother's.  All  these  facts 
might  have  been  as  humiliating  to  the  Greek  of 
the  patriarchal  era  as  the  Darwinian  hypothesis 
was  to  the  mid-Victorian.  But  the  Greek 
stated  them,  naively,  in  terms  that  saved  his 
self-respect  as  a  member  of  man-controlled 
society.  The  primitive  ancestress  became  a 
lovely  princess,  beloved  of  a  god  or  married 
to  a  fair-haired  invader  from  the  north.  Find- 
ing that  women  had  once  been  of  more  social 
importance  they  endowed  them  instinctively 
with  royal  attributes.  Great  ladies  like  Jocasta 
and  Helen  and  Clytemnestra  they  made  of  those 
dimly  discerned  traditional  women  with  whose 
hand  the  title  of  a  kingdom  passed.  But  by 
far  the  most  striking  expression  of  their  rem- 
iniscence of  the  old  status  of  women,  was  the 
story  of  the  Amazons.  This  tribe  of  warrior- 
women  was  ranged,  it  is  true,  with  the  powers 
of  darkness.  Between  his  adventures  with  the 
mares  of  Diomede  and  the  oxen  of  Geryones, 


THE  GREEK  LADY  23 

Herakles  had  to  subdue  their  queen,  Hippolyta, 
and  take  her  girdle  from  her;  Bellerophon  was 
despatched  against  them  in  Lycia,  and  they 
fought  against  the  Greeks  at  Troy.  But  al- 
though the  society  they  symbolised  was  part  of 
the  old  order  which  the  Greek  could  not  suffer, 
he  still  felt  the  beauty  that  might  come  of  a 
free,  wild  life  for  women  not  dominated  and 
not  oversexed.  There  is  not  a  disrespectful 
word  of  the  Amazons  in  Greek  literature  and 
the  utmost  resources  of  Greek  art  were  used 
to  render  their  lovely  vigour  and  the  sadness  of 
its  inevitable  defeat.  Too  dangerous  to  be 
allowed  among  men,  their  type  was  perpetuated 
among  the  immortals  in  Artemis,  the  spirit  of 
the  wildwood,  both  boon  and  bane  of  all  wild 
creatures,  strong,  fearless,  unconquerable,  with 
a  strain  of  antique  cruelty  pointing  plainly 
enough  to  her  primitive  origin.  But  Artemis, 
the  bitter  virgin,  was  denaturalised.  The 
Amazons — and  here  precisely  lay  their  menace 
to  a  man-governed  world — shared  the  full 
human  lot,  mated  with  men  worthy  of  them 
and  bore  children,  a  marvellous  race  since 
they  sprang  from  warriors  on  both  sides.  But 
the  male  children  were  exiled  from  the  state 
and  the  girls  grew  up  to  be  like  their  mothers 
before  them,  crowning  with  chaste  beauty  the 
manly  virtues  of  courage  and  honesty.  Though 


24  THE  LADY 

the  evolution  of  Greek  society  proceeded  to  the 
complete  social  subjection  of  women  it  never 
lost  sight  of  the  glory  of  the  alternative  course. 
We  may  almost  say  that  the  social  situation  was 
symbolised  in  the  tradition  of  Achilles'  regret 
when  he  had  slain  Penthesilea  in  combat  before 
Troy.  As  he  looked  upon  her  lying  dead  at 
his  feet  he  grieved  that  he  had  overcome  her 
and  thought  how  much  better  it  would  have 
been  had  he  taken  her  to  wife. 

Thus  did  the  Greeks  picture  to  themselves  a 
group  of  knightly  ladies  to  represent  the  ob- 
stinate and  irreducible  element  in  primitive 
maternal  society.  The  compromises  by  which 
the  more  ductile  communities  shifted  toward 
the  predominance  of  the  male  are  also 
shadowed  forth  in  the  world  we  know  as 
Homeric  society.  Everyone  knows  how  Odys- 
seus, shipwrecked,  naked  and  starving,  slept  the 
sleep  of  exhaustion  in  the  wood  by  the  sea  in 
the  land  of  the  Phaeacians  and  how  he  was 
roused  by  the  cries  of  the  princess  Nausikaa 
and  her  maidens  playing  at  ball.  When  the 
hero  emerged  among  them,  a  haggard,  wild- 
eyed  tramp,  the  handmaidens,  already  of  the 
school  of  thought  that  deems  your  true  lady 
a  timid  thing,  fled  screaming  in  panic.  But  the 
princess,  exemplar  of  a  better  breeding,  stood 
her  ground  and  heard  what  the  suppliant  had 


THE  GREEK  LADY  25 

to  say.  Brave,  cool  and  of  independent  judg- 
ment, the  girl  considered  all  the  circumstances 
of  the  case,  weighing  the  stranger's  good  ad- 
dress against  his  alarming  appearance  and  his 
evident  need  of  instant  succour  against  possible 
infraction  of  the  convenances.  Her  good  man- 
agement of  the  situation,  her  charming  girlish 
dignity  and  the  liberty  she  took  of  falling  in 
love  with  the  man  she  had  saved,  prepare  us 
for  rinding  that  she  lived  in  a  land  where 
women  had  very  lately  been  in  a  strong  social 
position.  The  text  says  that  Nausikaa's  mother 
Arete  was  married  to  Alkinoos,  her  own  father's 
brother,  a  consanguinity  that  did  not  count 
where  descent  was  traced  through  the  female 
line.  "And  Alkinoos  took  her  to  wife,  and 
honoured  her  as  no  other  woman  in  the  world 
is  honoured,  of  all  that  nowadays  keep  house 
under  the  hand  of  their  lords.  Thus  she  hath, 
and  hath  ever  had,  all  worship  heartily  from 
her  dear  children  and  from  her  lord  Alkinoos 
and  from  all  the  folk  who  look  on  her  as  on 
a  goddess  and  greet  her  with  reverent  speech 
when  she  goes  about  the  town.  Yea,  for  she 
too  hath  no  lack  of  understanding.  To 
whomso  she  shows  favour,  even  if  they  be  men, 
she  ends  their  feuds."*  This  is  an  invaluable 
expression  of  the  Greek  notion  of  a  lady  of  the 

*  "Odyssey,"  trans,  by  Butcher  and  Lang. 


26  THE  LADY 

old  regime,  sitting  as  judge  among  her  people 
and  honoured  like  a  god.  But  it  will  be  noted 
that  the  lady  now  has  a  lord,  and  that  man- 
made  propriety  controls  the  free  spirit  of 
Nausikaa. 

In  spite  of  the  traces  of  an  older  order, 
Homeric  society  in  general  shows  woman  sub- 
ordinated, and  in  consequence  a  great  efflores- 
ence  of  the  lady.  The  man  is  the  head  of  the 
family  and  requires  strict  fidelity  from  his  wife. 
He,  however,  is  permitted  the  patriarchal  privi- 
lege of  minor  wives  who  are  generally  bonds- 
women. The  lady  thus  assumes  her  well-known 
social  status;  her  faithfulness  is  the  condition 
of  her  welfare,  and  she  is  indemnified  for  the 
discomfort  of  having  rivals  by  the  added  lustre 
which  their  inferior  condition  confers  upon 
hers.  The  Homeric  lady  is  bought  of  her 
father  by  her  bridegroom,  and  it  is  honourable 
to  her  when  the  price  is  high.  "She  who  brings 
cattle"  is  the  epithet  of  an  attractive  girl.  Her 
marriage  is  arranged  by  her  father,  without  re- 
gard to  sentiment.  The  eternal  question  as  to 
the  relative  chance  of  happiness  in  the  marriage 
of  convenance  and  that  of  inclination  may  be 
illumined  by  Homer's  evidence.  Andromache, 
Hector's  wife,  was  polydoros  ("bought  with 
many  gifts"),  she  passed  as  a  chattel  from  her 


THE  GREEK  LADY  27 

father  to  her  husband;  but  the  world  has  yet 
to  imagine  a  more  touching  relation  between 
man  and  wife  than  that  of  Andromache  and 
Hector.  The  whole  story  of  the  lot  of  woman- 
kind under  feudal  institutions  is  told  in  the 
famous  passage  of  the  last  parting  of  these  two. 
Hector  going  out  to  fight  sought  his  wife  to  bid 
her  farewell.  She  clasped  his  hand  and  weep- 
ing prayed  him  to  remember  what  war  means  to 
women.  "Dear  my  lord,  this  thy  hardihood 
will  undo  thee,  neither  hast  thou  any  pity  for 
thine  infant  boy,  nor  for  me  forlorn  that  soon 
shall  be  thy  widow;  for  soon  will  the  Achaians 
all  set  upon  thee  and  slay  thee.  But  it  were  bet- 
ter for  me  to  go  down  to  the  grave  if  I  lose  thee ; 
for  never  more  will  any  comfort  be  mine,  when 
once  thou,  even  thou,  hast  met  thy  fate,  but  only 
sorrows.  .  .  .  Nay,  Hector,  thou  art  to  me 
father  and  lady  mother,  yea  and  brother,  even 
as  thou  art  my  goodly  husband.  Come  now, 
have  pity  and  abide  here  upon  the  tower,  lest 
thou  make  thy  child  an  orphan  and  thy  wife  a 
widow."  * 

But  great  Hector  of  the  glancing  helm  loved 
honour  more,  and  answered  her:  "Surely  I  take 
thought  for  all  these  things,  my  wife;  but  I 
have  very  sore  shame  of  the  Trojans  and  Trojan 

*  "Iliad,"  trans,  by  Lang,  Leaf  and  Myers. 


28  THE  LADY 

dames  with  trailing  robes,  if  like  a  coward  I 
shrink  away  from  battle."  * 

The  life  of  the  Homeric  lady  was  busy  and 
free.  She  wrought  at  pleasant  household  tasks 
among  her  maidens,  weaving  the  stuffs  needed 
for  everyday  use  and  performing  also  those 
wonders  of  artistic  needlework  that  always  play 
so  large  a  part  in  the  life  of  the  lady.  She 
lived  in  a  palace  built  strongly  to  withstand 
attack,  such  a  palace  as  still  exhibits  its  ground- 
plan  amid  the  ruins  of  Tiryns.  When  a 
stranger  had  been  allowed  to  pass  the  great 
gates  he  would  have  found  himself  in  a  large 
court-yard,  open  to  the  sky  but  surrounded  by 
a  covered  colonnade.  This  court-yard  would 
not  impress  a  modern  visitor  as  a  satisfactory 
entrance  to  a  great  lord's  house.  Here  the  ani- 
mals stood  that  wrere  to  furnish  the  day's  din- 
ner and  here  they  were  slaughtered.  Here 
beggars  were  allowed  to  sit,  and  here  was 
transacted  a  great  part  of  the  household  busi- 
ness that  we  relegate  to  unseen  regions.  From 
the  court  a  stately  portico  led  to  the  great  hall, 
the  heart  of  the  house,  where  on  the  central 
hearth,  between  the  four  pillars  that  sustained 
the  roof,  the  fire  was  kindled.  Beside  the 
hearth  stood  two  great  chairs,  one  for  the  lord 
and  one  for  the  lady.  These  chairs  were  of 

*  The  same. 


THE  GREEK  LADY  29 

cedar  and  ivory,  inlaid  with  gold  and  silver, 
and  there  were  many  other  chairs  and  small 
tables,  all  rich  in  material  and  workmanship. 
The  ill-lighted  room  was  brightened  by  cover- 
ing the  doors  and  walls  with  metal  plates,  often 
of  bronze  but  sometimes  of  silver  and  gold. 
Sheets  of  blue  glass  were  used  for  the  same  pur- 
pose, and  sometimes  painted  pictures.  Gleam- 
ing armour  was  also  ranged  along  the  walls,  but 
this  and  the  other  metal-work  suffered  from 
smoke,  which  in  the  absence  of  a  chimney 
escaped  as  best  it  might  through  an  opening  in 
the  roof  above  the  fireplace.  The  floor  was  of 
hard  lime-cement  mixed  with  pebbles.  In  this 
hall  the  meals  were  eaten  and  the  whole  of 
social  life  went  on.  Here  after  supper  the 
minstrel  took  his  harp  and  sang  the  deeds  of 
heroes.  At  night  the  family  was  widely  dis- 
tributed. The  lord  and  lady  had  their  own 
chamber;  the  daughters  and  maid-servants  slept 
in  a  quarter  apart,  sometimes  on  an  upper  floor. 
The  sons  of  the  house  had  each  a  room  to  him- 
self built  in  the  court,  and  visitors  had  heds 
laid  for  them  in  the  portico.  In  a  bathroom 
flagged  with  limestone  stood  the  polished  bath, 
which  was  in  frequent  requisition.  The  small 
objects  in  daily  use,  the  earthen  pots  and  jars, 
the  curiously  wrought  weapons,  testify  to  the 
sense  of  beauty  and  the  refinement  of  life  that 


30  THE  LADY 

surrounded  the  Homeric  lady.  A  special  part 
of  the  house  was  set  apart  for  her  and  her 
women,  but  she  came  and  went  freely,  though 
apparently  never  unattended.  Her  easy,  shel- 
tered life  and  personal  elegance  are  re- 
flected in  the  frequent  reference  to  her  white 
arms,  her  trailing  dress,  her  fragrant  bosom. 
Her  ordinary  garment  was  the  peplos,  a  great 
woollen  web,  capable  of  much  variety  in  the 
draping.  It  was  held  in  place  by  a  girdle, 
richly  embroidered  and  clasped  with  gold. 
She  wore  also  by  way  of  ornament  a  necklace, 
a  frontlet  and  earrings  of  gold.  On  ceremoni- 
ous occasions  she  wore  a  veil,  of  finer  tissue 
than  her  peplos.  Generally  her  garments  were 
"shining  white,"  but  sometimes  they  were 
coloured  and  the  commonest  colour  was  purple; 
they  were  washed  in  the  streams,  as  clothes  are 
still  commonly  washed  in  Greece,  and  dried  on 
the  rocks  and  the  grass.  Her  personal  belong- 
ings were  rich  and  curious,  and  handmaidens 
waited  on  her  at  every  step.  When  Telemachos 
visited  Menelaos,  his  hostess  made  her  appear- 
ance like  a  very  fine  lady  indeed:  "Helen 
came  forth  from  her  fragrant  vaulted  chamber, 
like  Artemis  of  the  golden  arrows;  and  with  her 
came  Adraste  and  set  for  her  the  well-wrought 
chair,  and  Alcippe  bare  a  rug  of  soft  wool,  and 
Phylo  bare  a  silver  basket  which  Alcandre  gave 


"A  stately  woman,  both  gentle  and  dread." 

Demeter.    Kore    and    Triptolemus.      Relief    from    the    Propylae     of    Eleusis. 
Fifth  century,  B.  C. 

See  f.   .3 


THE  GREEK  LADY  31 

her,  the  wife  of  Polybus,  who  dwelt  in  Thebes 
of  Egypt.  His  wife  bestowed  on  Helen  lovely 
gifts;  a  golden  distaff  did  she  give,  and  a  silver 
basket  with  wheels  beneath,  and  the  rims 
thereof  were  finished  with  gold.  This  it  was 
that  the  handmaid  Phylo  bare  and  set  beside  her, 
filled  with  dressed  yarn,  and  across  it  was  laid 
a  distaff  charged  with  wool  of  violet  blue.  So 
Helen  sat  her  down  in  the  chair  and  beneath 
was  a  footstool  for  the  feet."  * 

Although  the  presence  of  the  minor  wife  is 
abundantly  visible  in  the  background  of  Ho- 
meric society,  the  tendency  is  nevertheless  in 
the  direction  of  monogamy.  In  the  families 
that  are,  so  to  speak,  in  focus  there  is  but  one 
wife  as  there  is  but  one  husband.  Sincere  and 
robust  affection  between  man  and  wife  and  the 
passionate  love  of  both  for  the  children  is  the 
norm.  If  the  picture  seems  too  rosy  to  be 
true,  we  must  remember  that  Homer's  gold- 
smith's work  also  seemed  to  be  beyond  the 
probable  until  it  began  to  be  recovered  out  of 
the  earth.  Now  that  we  have  been  driven  to 
believe  him  about  dagger-blades,  we  may  per- 
haps trust  him  further  in  the  matter  of  married 
love.  There  was  every  reason  why  the  lady 
should  cling  to  her  lord,  for  his  strong  arm 
only  held  her  on  her  height.  Any  woman 

*  "Odyssey,"  trans,  by  Butcher  and  Lang. 


32  THE  LADY 

whose  protector  failed  her  might  become  a 
slave.  Moreover  she  was  her  lord's  property, 
and  in  case  of  misdemeanour  on  her  part  he  held 
the  patriarchal  power  of  life  and  death.  In 
her  husband's  absence  her  own  son  was  her 
master.  Penelope  was  bullied  by  Telemachos 
and  was  proud  of  his  manly  self-assertion.  But 
she  in  her  turn  was  absolute  mistress  of  her 
slaves,  and  had  no  reason  to  be  dissatisfied  with 
her  position  in  a  system  that  placed  so  many 
below  her  and  so  few  above  her. 

When  we  speak  of  Homeric  society  we  as- 
sume that  the  Homeric  poems  deal  with  an 
actual  state  of  things  and  with  a  single  period. 
These  assumptions  are  doubtless  both  false,  and 
no  department  of  scholarly  research  is  more 
attractive  than  that  which  is  devoted  to  under- 
mining them.  It  is  nevertheless  legitimate  for 
our  purpose  to  view  them  naively  as  the  record 
of  a  wonderful  world,  wherein  men  used  an 
amazing  language  that  never  was  spoken  by 
living  man,  and  saw  sights  and  did  deeds  that 
were  never  part  of  human  experience.  We  may 
legitimately  look  upon  them  thus,  for  doubt- 
less the  historic  Greeks  of  the  great  period 
themselves  did  so,  and  far  more  important  than 
the  scientific  character  of  the  poems  is  the  effect 
they  had  on  the  collective  mind  of  the  race  that 
evolved  them.  It  must  be  constantly  borne  in 


THE  GREEK  LADY  33 

mind,  in  estimating  the  Greek's  ideal  of  a  lady, 
that  there  never  was  a  time  when  he  would  not 
have  admitted  theoretically  that  she  should  be 
of  the  heroic  type.  Literature  never  ceased  to 
take  its  women  from  the  early  legends,  philos- 
ophers and  satirists  were  always  attracted  by 
the  hypothesis  of  social  equality  between  the 
sexes,  and  at  the  time  when  militarism  and 
democracy  had  done  their  worst  for  the  lady, 
she  might  easily  in  her  infrequent  walks  abroad 
come  upon  a  sculptor  modelling  a  magnificent 
young  creature  on  horseback  who,  in  spite  of 
what  he  saw  about  him,  persisted  as  his  idea 
of  woman. 

IV 

ONE  of  the  temperamental  differences 
between  Plato  and  Aristotle  consists 
in  the  greater  willingness  of  Aristotle 
to  acquiesce  in  existing  conditions  and  to  exert 
his  imagination  to  provide  reasons  for  their 
permanence.  Plato's  imagination  urged  him 
to  view  existing  conditions  in  a  different  and 
more  critical  light.  Nowhere  does  the  differ- 
ence come  out  more  strongly  than  in  their  views 
of  the  woman-question.  There  was  room  for 
a  comparative  study  of  it,  based  not  only  on 
traditions  of  the  past  but  on  the  actual  case  at 


34  THE  LADY 

Sparta,  where  women  enjoyed  greater  social 
freedom  than  at  Athens,  shared  the  physical 
training  of  the  men  and  held  property.  Aris- 
totle, however,  noted  that  in  the  society  with 
which  he  was  most  familiar,  the  woman,  the 
slave  and  the  child  were  in  subjection  to  men. 
Assuming  that  this  is  the  best  of  all  possible 
arrangements,  he  gives  it  a  quasi-scientific  basis: 
"The  slave  has  no  deliberative  faculty  at  all; 
the  woman  has,  but  it  is  without  authority,  and 
the  child  has  it,  but  it  is  immature."  He  notes 
that  the  occupations  of  women  are  different 
from  those  of  men  and  shows  that  this  must  be 
so:  if  the  women  go  into  the  fields  with  the 
men,  who  will  manage  the  house?  "It  is  ab- 
surd to  argue  from  the  analogy  of  animals  that 
men  and  women  should  follow  the  same  pur- 
suits; for  animals  have  not  to  manage  a  house- 
hold." It  will  be  seen  that  the  mind  of  Aris- 
totle does  not  in  this  connection  rise  far  above 
that  of  Ischomachos.  They  agree  that  God  and 
custom  have  placed  women  indoors. 

Plato,  on  the  other  hand,  realised  that  as 
women  had  not  always  lived  in  the  shadow  they 
might  conceivably  emerge  again  into  the  sun- 
light. He  was  possessed  by  the  thoroughly 
scientific  idea  of  the  solidarity  of  the  race. 
Could  it  be  permanently  good  for  the  state  that 
half  of  its  adult  free  population  should  lag  be- 


The  Aspiring  lady.— "Woman  had  not  always  lived  in  the 

shadows." 
From  a  white  Athenian  vase  in  the  British  Museum. 


THE  GREEK  LADY  35 

hind  the  other  half  in  body  and  mind?  He  saw 
that  a  negative  answer  would  carry  him  very  far, 
but  perhaps  the  farther  the  better.  In  the  course 
of  organising  an  ideal  state  in  which  the  up- 
per class,  not  primarily  pursuing  its  own  happi- 
ness, should  be  the  disinterested  guardian  of 
the  whole,  he  described  as  an  essential  part  of 
that  class  such  a  lady  as  the  world  had  never 
seen.  There  was  to  be  no  assumption  that  she 
had  or  lacked  this  or  that  faculty;  custom  had 
made  certain  distinctions  but  whether  God  con- 
curred in  them  was  to  be  determined  by  experi- 
ment. The  girls  of  this  chosen  class  were  to 
be  educated  in  every  respect  like  the  boys; 
Amazons  were  once  more  to  be  seen,  but  this 
time  not  opposed  to  men.  Peaceful  sports  and 
warlike  exercise  were  to  develop  the  physique 
of  boys  and  girls  alike,  and  the  training  of  the 
mind  was  to  be  the  same  for  both.  We  are 
still  uncertain  whether  there  are  actually  psy- 
chic "sex-characters"  or  not;  Plato  could  not 
see  evidence  of  any.  The  different  parts 
played  by  men  and  women  in  the  continuance 
of  the  race  seemed  to  him  to  have  no  necessary 
connection  with  their  relative  ability  to  prac- 
tice medicine  or  to  play  the  flute.  We  grant, 
he  urged,  that  a  bald-headed  man  is  very  dif- 
ferent in  one  regard  from  a  long-haired  man; 
shall  we  then  say  that  if  bald  men  may  become 


36  THE  LADY 

cobblers,  long-haired  men  may  not?  And 
similarly,  if  we  are  sending  for  a  doctor,  shall 
we  try  to  get  one  who  excels  in  professional 
skill,  or  one  who  performs  this  or  that  function 
in  reproduction?  "None  of  the  occupations 
which  comprehend  the  ordering  of  a  state  be- 
long to  woman  as  woman,  nor  yet  to  man  as 
man,  but  natural  gifts  are  to  be  found  here  and 
there  in  both  sexes  alike ;  and,  so  far  as  her  na- 
ture is  concerned,  the  woman  is  admissible  to 
all  pursuits  as  well  as  the  man.  Shall  we  then 
appropriate  all  duties  to  men  and  none  to 
women?  On  the  contrary,  we  shall  hold  that 
one  woman  may  have  talents  for  medicine  and 
another  be  without  them;  and  that  one  may  be 
musical  and  another  unmusical;  one  woman 
may  have  qualifications  for  gymnastic  exercises 
and  for  war,  and  another  be  unwarlike  and 
without  taste  for  gymnastics;  there  may  be  a 
love  of  knowledge  in  one  woman  and  a  distaste 
for  it  in  another.  There  are  also  some  women 
who  are  fit  and  others  who  are  unfit  for  the 
office  of  guardian.  As  far  as  the  guardianship 
of  the  state  is  concerned,  there  is  no  difference 
between  the  natures  of  the  man  and  of  the 
woman,  but  only  various  degrees  of  weakness 
and  strength.  Thus  we  shall  have  to  select  duly 
qualified  women  also,  to  share  in  the  life  and  of- 
ficial labours  of  the  duly  qualified  men,  since  we 


THE  GREEK  LADY  37 

find  that  they  are  competent  to  the  work,  and  of 
kindred  nature  with  the  men."* 

It  is  well  known  that  to  secure  the  best  public 
service  from  his  governing  class,  both  men  and 
women,  Plato  made  a  clean  sweep  of  property 
and  the  family  from  among  them.  Temporary 
unions  were  to  be  arranged  by  the  state,  chil- 
dren were  to  be  reared  by  the  state,  dwellings 
and  mess-tables  were  to  be  furnished  by  the 
state.  These  proposals  met  the  same  objections 
then  that  they  meet  now.  Whether  property 
and  the  status  of  women  are  indissolubly  con- 
nected is  still  the  fundamental  social  question. 
The  thing  to  be  noted  by  students  of  the  lady 
is  this  new  conception  of  her.  Like  the  lady 
of  feudalism,  she  is  the  female  of  a  governing 
class,  yet  she  is  not  economically  dependent. 
Like  the  Christian  nun,  she  is  explicitly  de- 
voted, not  to  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  but  to  the 
service  of  others ;  yet  she  is  not  to  forswear  mar- 
riage and  maternity.  We  must  add  to  the  his- 
toric oddity  of  the  discrepancy  between  the 
actual  Athenian  lady  and  the  lady  of  art,  her 
still  more  striking  contrast  with  this  theo- 
retical lady.  A  time  of  her  deep  subjection 
produced  the  boldest  declaration  of  her  inde- 
pendence ever  drawn.  Other  men  had  thoughts 

*  Condensed  from  the  "Republic,"  Book  v.,  trans,  by  Davies 
and  Vaughan. 


38  THE  LADY 

on  this  subject  similar  to  Plato's.  The  com- 
edies of  Aristophanes  show  a  thorough  under- 
standing of  the  problem  and  prove  that  the 
general  public  must  have  been  familiar  with 
it.  It  could  not  logically  fail  to  interest  men 
who  lived  beneath  the  shadow  of  Athena,  of 
that  spirit  of  self-restraint  who  caught  Achilles 
by  his  yellow  hair  to  hold  him  back  from 
murder,  that  spirit  of  wisdom  who  walked  with 
Odysseus  as  his  familiar  friend,  and  whom  in 
all  her  aspects  they  held  to  be  typically  fem- 
inine. There  was  no  incongruity  in  broach- 
ing in  her  presence  a  bold  view  of  the  destiny 
of  women.  The  really  humorous  paradox  is 
that  Pericles,  standing  up  to  voice  the  ideals  of 
the  people  she  had  formed,  should  take  no 
further  account  of  the  sex  she  was  one  of  than 
to  beg  its  representatives  on  earth  to  be  at  all 
costs  ladylike. 


1.  "The  pretty  women   in  the   street." 

From  an   attic   bowl   in   the   manner   of    Douris.     Fifth   century,    B.  C.     I« 
the   British   Museum. 

2.  Pericles  begs  Athene  to  be  ladylike. 
From  an  attic  amphora.     Fifth  century,   B.  C. 


THE  ROMAN  LADY 


"All  men  rule  over  women,  we  Romans  rule  over  all  men, 
and  our  wives  rule  over  us." — CATO  THE  CENSOR. 

THE  Romans,  who  were  notoriously  will- 
ing to  consider  their  genius  for  con- 
quest as  compensation  for  some  sorts  of 
genius  that  were  denied  them,  were  neverthe- 
less unable  completely  to  conquer  their  women. 
With  the  best  will  in  the  world  they  never 
succeeded  in  simplifying  the  problem  as  the 
Greeks  had  done.  Though  the  Roman  lady 
was  theoretically  in  the  same  position  as  the 
Greek  lady,  she  was  in  practice  a  different 
species.  Ordinary  usage  speaks  of  "the  women 
of  Greece  and  Rome"  as  if  they  were  inter- 
changeable. In  this  regard  as  in  too  many 
others,  it  is  popular  to  dwell  on  certain  formal 
points  of  likeness  between  the  two  great  rival 
races  rather  than  on  essential  points  of  differ- 
ence. Greece  and  Rome  have  in  fact  suffered 
the  fate  that,  according  to  Madame  Cardinal, 
has  overtaken  Voltaire  and  Rousseau:  "//  parait 
que,  de  leur  vivant,  Us  ne  pouvaient  pas  se 

39 


40  THE  LADY 

sentir,  qu'ils  ont  passe  leur  existence  a  se  dire  des 
sottises.  Ce  nest  que  depuis  leur  mart  que  les 
deux  font  la  paire."  In  regard  to  the  present 
question,  the  formal  likeness  which  they  have  in 
common  with  other  patriarchal  societies  is  that 
both  held  women  to  be  perpetual  minors.  In 
Rome  as  in  Athens,  a  woman  was  subject  to  her 
father  or  his  representative  until  she  became 
subject  to  her  husband.  But  while  at  Athens 
the  spirit  of  the  law  prevailed  and  harmonised 
with  the  general  social  sentiment,  in  Rome  it  was 
in  opposition  to  social  sentiment  and  was  gradu- 
ally modified  by  legal  fictions  and  other  compro- 
mises until  it  bloomed  into  one  of  those  com- 
plete anomalies  that  make  us  feel  how  similar 
ancient  society  was  to  our  own.  This  feeling  is 
much  more  frequently  evoked  by  the  history  of 
Rome  than  by  that  of  Greece.  The  Greek  is 
after  all  too  exceptional  and  too  uncompromis- 
ing to  be  quite  companionable.  But  with  the 
Roman  there  come  into  history  many  of  the 
limitations,  the  cross-purposes,  the  makeshift 
substitutes  for  high  intelligence,  the  feeling,  for 
instance,  that  it  is  more  gentlemanly  to  be  able 
to  buy  pictures  than  to  be  able  to  paint  them, 
the  Philistinism,  in  a  word,  that  makes  the 
world  seem  homelike. 

Apart  from  the  tendency  to  blend  her  with  the 
Greek  lady,  another  historical  fallacy  has  been 


THE  ROMAN  LADY  41 

at  work  to  obscure  the  features  of  the  lady  of 
Rome.  She  has  suffered  more  than  most  from 
representation  by  types.  In  thinking  of  her  one 
recalls  chiefly  extreme  cases.  The  imagination 
flits  bewildered  from  Lucretia  to  Messalina, 
from  Cornelia  mother  of  the  Gracchi  to  Agrip- 
pina  mother  of  Nero.  Tradition  and  the  parti- 
san have  done  their  best  to  fix  upon  her  a  rather 
inhuman  character,  whether  for  virtue  or  for 
vice.  It  is  a  study  of  some  interest  to  try  to 
discover  the  human  meaning  of  her  various  pre- 
sentations and  to  form  a  picture  of  her  out  of 
more  reconcilable  elements  than  mere  an- 
tithesis. 

Although  the  documents  for  early  Greek  his- 
tory carry  us  much  farther  back  in  time  than 
those  for  Roman  history,  the  rising  curtain 
nevertheless  reveals  the  Roman  in  an  earlier 
social  stage  than  the  Greek,  for  he  is  apparently 
still  marrying  by  capture.  While  women  have 
to  be  stolen  by  a  community,  their  numbers  will 
be  relatively  small;  there  will  probably  not  be 
enough  to  go  around.  Among  the  Romans  the 
natural  results  seem  to  have  comprised  a  certain 
social  importance  for  women  and  a  strict  monog- 
amy for  men  as  well  as  for  women.  Under 
these  conditions  it  was  apparently  not  neces- 
sary to  seclude  a  wife;  at  any  rate  the  Roman 
matron  of  all  periods  enjoyed  personal  freedom, 


42  THE  LADY 

entertained  her  husband's  guests,  had  a  voice 
in  his  affairs,  managed  his  house,  and  came  and 
went  as  she  pleased.  In  early  days  she  shared 
the  labours  and  the  dangers  of  the  insecure  life 
of  a  weak  people  among  hostile  neighbours. 
It  may  not  be  fanciful  to  say  that  the  liberty 
of  the  Roman  woman  of  classical  times  was  the 
inherited  reward  of  the  prowess  of  her  pioneer 
ancestress,  in  the  same  way  as  the  social  freedom 
of  the  American  woman  to-day  comes  to  her 
from  the  brave  colonial  housemother,  able  to 
work  and,  when  need  was,  to  fight.  It  would 
have  been  as  difficult  to  find  the  lady  in  early 
Italy  as  in  early  Massachusetts.  There  were 
no  courtesans  for  her  to  be  distinguished  from, 
and  there  were  relatively  but  few  slaves;  nor 
was  there  so  much  wealth  as  to  fix  a  gulf  be- 
tween rich  and  poor.  There  is  nothing  in 
Roman  traditions  that  corresponds  in  the  least 
with  Homer's  lady.  The  lady  came  fast  enough 
upon  the  Roman  with  all  his  other  troubles, 
but  before  that  time  the  strong  woman  of  the 
plain  old  days  had  become  a  fixed  tradition,  en- 
dowed with  heroic  attributes  and  invoked  to 
shame  the  singular  product  of  wealth  and  cos- 
mopolitanism that  took  her  place.  The  his- 
toric Roman  idealised  the  virtues  of  early 
history  as  shown  by  his  ancestors,  precisely  as 
he  idealised  them  when  he  encountered  them 


THE  ROMAN  LADY  43 

again  among  the  Germans.  The  reverence  for 
women,  their  chastity  and  ther  physical  courage, 
seemed  in  each  case  a  wonderful  deviation  from 
human  nature  as  he  knew  it.  The  conditions 
that  produced  the  lady,  as  well  as  most  of  the 
other  complexities  of  his  life,  were  in  general 
the  result  of  his  contact  with  alien  civilisations. 
One  creative  act  however  which  he  accom- 
plished independently  helped  to  produce  the 
lady;  the  early  organisation,  namely,  of  Roman 
society  on  an  aristocratic  basis.  As  the  group 
of  tribal  elders  hardened  into  the  Roman  senate, 
it  gave  rise  to  the  patrician  class  with  the  char- 
acteristic of  hereditary  privilege.  Thus  the 
Roman  introduced  pride  of  birth  as  a  social 
motive.  While  he  was  still  poor  and  illiterate 
he  became  "noble,"  and  his  wife  became,  in 
the  most  artificial  sense  possible,  a  lady.  We 
see  her  of  course  through  the  softening  medium 
of  literary  treatment;  her  industry,  her  physi- 
cal courage,  her  self-devotion  to  the  family  and 
the  clan,  her  appreciation  of  honour  from  the 
man's  point  of  view,  were  traits  that  grouped 
themselves  harmoniously  about  the  great  names 
of  Hersilia  and  Lucretia  and  Valeria  and 
Volumnia.  Shakespeare's  vision  of  her  is 
hardly  more  enthusiastic  than  Plutarch's,  from 
which  indeed  it  was  derived.  Plutarch  roundly 
declared  that  he  could  not  subscribe  to  Thu- 


44  THE  LADY 

cydides's  famous  definition  of  the  virtue  of 
women — that  it  should  consist  in  their  being 
spoken  of  as  little  as  possible,  whether  for 
praise  or  blame.  "The  Roman  practice  is 
best,"  he  said,  "by  which  the  funeral  eulogy  is 
publicly  pronounced  over  a  dead  woman  as 
freely  as  over  a  dead  man."  And  his  pages  arc 
full  of  references  to  the  excellences  of  the  dead 
women  of  old.  This  early  Roman  lady,  shin- 
ing with  tribal  virtues,  survived  only  sporadic- 
ally in  history.  We  may  almost  say  that 
Cornelia  supports  unaided  the  weight  of  the 
majestic  tradition.  The  fragments  of  her  letters 
to  her  surviving  son  after  the  murder  of  his 
brother,  may  easily  be  genuine,  and  they  bear 
out  the  view  of  her  character  taken  by  posterity. 
Unquestionably  Cornelia  proves  something  for 
the  existence  of  the  old  type,  but  it  must  not 
be  forgotten  that  she  would  be  an  exceptional 
person  in  any  age.  Single  episodes  are  re- 
ported in  which  other  ladies  behaved  as  the 
theoretical  domina  should;  Porcia  and  Arria 
hand  on  the  torch.  But  they  excite  among  their 
contemporaries  the  wonder  always  roused  by  an 
anachronism.  Just  as  the  western  world  stood 
aghast  at  the  prodigies  of  Japanese  warfare,  in 
which  the  most  modern  science  was  used  as  the 
weapon  of  a  tribal  psychology  long  outgrown 
elsewhere,  so  the  Rome  of  Claudius's  time 


THE  ROMAN  LADY  45 

marvelled  at  Arria's  smoking  dagger.  In  gen- 
eral it  must  be  confessed  that  when  the  Roman 
lady  comes  upon  the  historic  stage  she  has 
already  developed  some  of  the  characteristics 
that  were  to  make  her  a  perplexing  element  of 
society.  Her  force  of  character  and  the  free- 
dom to  which  she  had  been  accustomed  were 
certain  to  play  havoc  with  the  patriarchal  sys- 
tem as  soon  as  circumstances  should  give  op- 
portunity, and  opportunity  was  given  almost  as 
soon  as  history  begins. 

From  the  beginning  of  Roman  expansion  in 
the  third  century  before  Christ,  the  Roman 
husband  was  frequently  and  for  long  periods 
away  from  home.  The  wars  with  Carthage,  the 
wars  in  the  East  and  in  Spain,  the  wars  in 
northern  Europe,  drew  the  patrician  abroad  as 
systematically  as  the  Crusades  drew  the  knights 
of  later  Europe.  In  each  case  profound 
changes  resulted  in  the  character,  or  at  any  rate 
in  the  demeanour  of  the  lady.  The  first  break- 
ing down  of  her  old  social  status  seems  to  have 
been  in  the  direction  of  allowing  her  to  hold 
property.  The  marriage  ceremony  which 
passed  her  as  a  ward  from  the  hand  of  her 
father  to  that  of  her  husband  was  so  modified 
as  to  leave  a  married  woman  theoretically 
subject  to  the  patria  potestas,  and  therefore  to 
prevent  her  property  from  passing  to  her  huSv 


46  THE  LADY 

band.  The  effect  of  this  arrangement  appears 
on  the  whole  to  have  been  her  financial  inde- 
pendence. She  could  evidently  receive  legacies, 
for  special  legislation  was  needed  at  the  end  of 
the  Punic  wars  to  prevent  women  of  the 
wealthiest  class  from  doing  so.  The  feeling  of 
patriarchal  society  is  always  strongly  against 
the  economic  independence  of  women.  Aris- 
totle believed  its  prevalence  in  Sparta  to  be  one 
of  the  causes  of  decadence.  The  ancient  lady 
could  in  no  wise  create  property  for  herself, 
and  the  men  who  had  acquired  it  by  labour  or 
conquest  felt  the  unfairness  of  allowing  it  to  be 
controlled  by  a  parasite.  Just  after  the  close 
of  the  Punic  war,  in  which  Rome's  economic 
sufferings  were  very  great,  the  Roman  ladies  re- 
belled against  certain  sumptuary  legislation 
which  specifically  curtailed  their  expenditure. 
The  famous  speech  of  Cato,  opposing  the  repeal 
of  the  Oppian  law,  is,  as  reported  by  Livy,  an 
expression  of  the  ever-recurrent  uneasiness  of  the 
male  in  the  presence  of  the  insurgent  female, 
and  in  particular  of  the  dislike  of  women  which 
we  shall  find  a  pretty  constant  factor  in  the 
Roman's  temperament. 

"If,  Romans,"  said  he  "every  individual 
among  us  had  made  it  a  rule  to  maintain  the 
prerogative  and  authority  of  a  husband  with 
respect  to  his  own  wife,  we  should  have  less 


Agripptna. 
From  the  statue  in  the  Lateran   Museum. 


See  p. 


THE  ROMAN  LADY  47 

trouble  with  the  whole  sex.  It  was  not  with- 
out painful  emotions  of  shame  that  I  just  now 
made  my  way  into  the  forum  through  a  crowd 
of  women.  Had  I  not  been  restrained  by 
respect  for  the  modesty  and  dignity  of  some  in- 
dividuals among  them  I  should  have  said  to 
them,  'What  sort  of  practice  is  this,  of  running 
out  into  public,  besetting  the  streets  and  ad- 
dressing other  women's  husbands?  Could  not 
each  have  made  the  same  request  to  her  hus- 
band at  home?  Are  your  blandishments  more 
seductive  in  public  than  in  private,  and  with 
other  women's  husbands  than  your  own?' 

"Our  ancestors  thought  it  not  proper  that 
women  should  transact  any,  even  private  busi- 
ness, without  a  director.  We,  it  seems,  suffer 
them  now  to  interfere  in  the  management  of 
state  affairs.  Will  you  give  the  reins  to  their 
untractable  nature  and  their  uncontrolled  pas- 
sions? This  is  the  smallest  of  the  injunctions 
laid  on  them  by  usage  or  the  laws,  all  of  which 
women  bear  with  impatience;  they  long  for 
liberty,  or  rather  for  licence.  What  will  they 
not  attempt  if  they  win  this  victory?  The 
moment  they  have  arrived  at  an  equality  with 
you,  they  will  become  your  superiors."  * 

The  love  of  excitement  which  was  a  temper- 

*Livy,  trans,   by   D.    Spillan,   Cyrus    Edmonds,   and   W.   A. 
M'Devitte. 


48  THE  LADY 

amental  trait  of  the  Roman  lady  of  history  be- 
came a  dangerous  matter.  It  was  natural  that 
strong-willed  women,  exceedingly  like  the  men 
of  their  race  in  body  and  mind,  should  seek  for 
some  equivalent  of  the  adventures  their  hus- 
bands were  engaged  in  the  world  over.  They 
had  not  been  tamed  as  had  the  ladies  of  Athens 
by  the  slow  action  of  long  ages  of  masculine 
encroachment.  They  were  much  nearer  the 
soil  and  freedom.  The  men  had  not  had  time 
to  bring  them  thoroughly  into  subjection,  and 
yet  were  both  unable  and  unwilling  to  set 
them  free.  Both  sexes  were  in  a  false  position, 
and  overt  acts  of  warfare  became  common. 
Livy  reports  three  cases  of  husband-murder  in 
noble  families  in  thirty  years.  Divorce  be- 
came a  general  practice.  Not  only  the  frivo- 
lous used  it  but  the  staid.  Men  had  to  be 
persuaded  into  matrimony  as  a  duty.  The  ex- 
cellent Metellus  Macedonicus  started  a  propa- 
ganda of  marriage  on  patriotic  grounds,  and  his 
pessimistic  argument  became  a  classic:  "If  we 
could  get  along  without  wives,"  he  is  reported 
to  have  said,  "we  should  all  dispense  with  the 
nuisance.  But  since  nature  has  decreed  that 
we  can  neither  live  very  comfortably  with 
them  nor  at  all  without  them,  we  should  con- 
sult rather  our  permanent  good  than  our  tem- 
porary happiness." 


THE  ROMAN  LADY  49 

All  these  things  were  table-talk  while  Cor- 
nelia was  still  living.  All  about  her  was  a 
welter  of  feminine  discontent.  Gradual  amel- 
ioration of  the  marriage  law  was  accompanied 
by  an  invention  whereby  even  an  unmarried 
woman  might  hold  property  and  control  it; 
she  could  contract  a  fictitious  marriage,  dissolve 
it  at  once,  choose  a  guardian  to  suit  herself  and 
through  him  as  a  dummy  administer  her  own 
estate.  These  changes,  however,  while  en- 
larging the  lady's  power  gave  her  nothing  to 
satisfy  her  ambition  and  keep  her  out  of  mis- 
chief. Ethically  her  situation  was  a  dangerous 
one,  and  many  elements  of  safety  were  with- 
drawn when  wealth,  culture,  exciting  new  re- 
ligions, diseases,  slaves  and  philosophy  were 
brought  to  Rome  as  spoils  of  war. 

II 

THE     unfortunate     reaction     upon     the 
Romans    of    their    achievements    is    a 
commonplace  of  history.     The  best  of 
them  were  reduced  in  numbers  by  centuries  of 
constant  warfare,  and  the  survivors  were  as- 
sailed  by   those   bacilli   of   civilisation   which 
always  ravage  a  fresh  race  with  a  virulence  un- 
known  among  the  peoples   that  have  become 
adapted    to    them.    And    the    conditions    that 


50  THE  I7ADY 

proved  in  the  long  run  fatal  to  the  noble  Roman 
worked  rapidly  and  perniciously  upon  his 
wife.  With  the  introduction  of  slavery,  what 
occupation  the  lady  had  was  gone.  She  re- 
signed the  care  of  her  house,  the  care  of  her 
children,  the  care  of  her  person  to  Greek  slaves 
who  understood  all  these  matters  a  great  deal 
better  than  she  did.  The  time  that  was  left 
on  her  hands  she  filled  with  the  pseudo-activi- 
ties of  the  nouveau  riche.  Through  her  efforts 
"society"  was  organised  for  the  first  time  in 
Europe.  What  people  wore,  what  they  ate 
and  drank,  what  sort  of  furniture  they  had  and 
how  much  their  horses  cost  were  questions  that 
then  for  the  first  time  acquired  the  importance 
they  have  ever  since  retained.  The  Greeks 
who,  to  be  sure,  had  nothing  in  their  dwellings 
that  was  not  beautiful,  had  still  supposed  that 
great  works  of  art  were  for  public  places. 
With  the  Romans  began  the  private  collection 
of  chefs-d'oeuvre  in  its  most  snobbish  aspect. 
The  parts  played  by  the  sexes  in  this  enter- 
prise sometimes  showed  the  same  division  of 
labour  that  prevails  very  largely  in  a  certain 
great  nation  of  our  own  day  that  shall  be  name- 
less: the  husband  paid  for  the  best  art  that 
money  could  buy,  and  the  wife  learned  to  talk 
about  it  and  to  entertain  the  artist.  It  is  true 
that  the  Roman  lady  began  also  to  improve  her 


Livia. 
From  the  statue  in  the  Kaples  Museum. 


See  p.  66 


THE  ROMAN  LADY  51 

mind.  She  studied  Greek  and  hired  Greek 
masters  to  teach  her  history  and  philosophy. 
Ladies  flocked  to  hear  lectures  on  all  sorts  of 
subjects,  originating  the  odd  connection  be- 
tween scholarship  and  fashion  which  still  per- 
sists. Their  annexation  of  the  field  of  letters 
was  exceedingly  annoying  to  their  husbands.  "I 
hate  the  woman,"  says  Juvenal,  "who  is  always 
turning  back  to  the  grammatical  rules  of 
Palaemon  and  consulting  them;  the  feminine 
antiquary  who  recalls  verses  unknown  to  me, 
and  corrects  the  words  of  an  unpolished  friend 
which  even  a  man  would  not  observe.  Let  a 
husband  be  allowed  to  make  a  solecism  in 
peace."  A  husband  naturally  preferred  in 
woman  the  kind  of  culture  attained  by  the 
amiable  Calpurnia,  Pliny's  wife.  He  says  of  her 
that  she  delighted  to  read  and  read  again  her 
husband's  works,  having  no  other  schoolmaster 
than  love.  Like  Rousseau's  Sophie,  the  Roman 
lady  should  have  had  du  gout  sans  etude,  des 
talents  sans  art,  du  jugement  sans  connaissance. 
A  woman  of  fashion,  we  are  told,  reckoned  it 
among  her  ornaments  if  it  were  said  of  her  that 
she  was  well-read  and  a  thinker,  and  that  she 
wrote  lyrics  almost  worthy  of  Sappho.  She  too 
must  have  her  hired  escort  of  teachers,  and  lis- 
ten to  them  now  and  then,  at  table  or  while  she 
was  having  her  hair  dressed, — at  other  times 


52  THE  LADY 

she  was  too  busy.  And  often  while  the  philos- 
opher was  discussing  high  ethical  themes  her 
maid  would  come  in  with  a  love-letter  and  the 
argument  must  wait  till  it  was  answered. 
Thesmopolis,  a  stoic  philosopher,  told  his  friend 
Lucian  of  a  mortifying  experience.  He  was 
attached  to  the  suite  of  a  great  lady  who  took  it 
into  her  head  to  make  a  journey  and  invited 
Thesmopolis  to  go  with  her.  He  found  in  the 
first  place  that  his  companion  in  the  carriage 
was  an  effeminate  youth,  a  pet  of  his  mistress, 
who  had  the  painted  face,  the  womanish  head- 
dress and  the  rolling  eye  of  his  class.  Thes- 
mopolis was  an  elderly  man  with  a  long  white 
beard,  respectable  to  the  last  degree.  He  suf- 
fered extremely  from  his  companion  who  sang 
and  whistled  on  the  road  and  would  have  stood 
up  and  danced  in  the  carriage  if  he  had  not  been 
(forcibly  restrained.  But  presently  this  an- 
noyance was  overshadowed  for  the  lady  halted 
her  own  carriage  and  called  to  her  philosopher. 
"Will  you  do  me  a  favour?"  said  she.  "Any- 
thing in  my  power,"  said  he.  "You  dear,  kind 
man,"  said  the  lady,  "take  my  lap-dog.  She 
is  not  well  and  I  cannot  make  the  servants  pay 
any  attention  to  her.  Indeed  they  don't  even 
take  care  of  me.  But  I  can  trust  her  to  your 
tender  heart."  Thesmopolis  could  not  refuse. 
He  tried  to  hide  the  miserable  little  creature 


THE  ROMAN  LADY  53 

under  his  cloak,  but  she  barked  incessantly  and 
chewed  his  beard.  Then  she  threw  up  her  yes- 
terday's soup,  and  finally  she  had  puppies  in  his 
lap. 

Nothing  very  important  in  the  way  of  pro- 
duction resulted  from  all  the  lady's  literary 
activity.  The  verses  of  Sulpicia,  if  Sulpicia's 
they  be,  are  the  sole  surviving  evidence  of 
creative  effort  among  her  kind;  and,  respect- 
able as  they  are,  they  need  not  disturb  Sappho's 
repose.  It  was  indirectly  that  the  Roman  lady 
affected  literature,  since  kinds  began  to  be  pro- 
duced to  her  special  taste;  for  it  is  hardly  an 
accident  that  the  vers  de  societe  should  expand 
and  the  novel  originate  in  periods  when  for  the 
first  time  women  were  a  large  element  in  the 
reading  public.  If  however  we  consider  the 
main  body  of  Latin  literature  with  an  eye  to 
the  reflection  in  it  of  the  lady,  we  find  at  once 
one  of  the  profound  differences  that  contrast  it 
with  the  literature  of  Greece.  The  feminism 
of  the  Greek  is  not  here.  Beyond  any  other 
literature  we  have,  that  of  Rome  is  masculine. 
As  Cornelia  is  pretty  nearly  an  isolated  case 
in  Roman  history,  selected  for  a  type  because 
she  is  so  far  from  typical,  so  Dido  stands 
practically  alone  in  Latin  literature  as  a  woman 
sympathetically  drawn.  Vergil,  the  most  Hel- 
lenised  of  Romans,  owes  a  very  considerable 


54  THE  LADY 

part  of  his  great  prestige  to  the  fact  that  he 
achieved  the  solitary  love-story  of  Latin  poetry. 
But  even  Vergil  did  not  venture  to  make  his 
heroine  a  Roman  lady;  and  her  regrettable  lack 
of  self-control  served  but  to  emphasise  the  hard 
core  of  Roman  temperament  in  the  hero. 
Lavinia  was  what  a  Roman  always  felt  a 
woman  should  be;  a  somewhat  cold  embodiment 
of  the  virtues  most  serviceable  to  men,  and  de- 
void of  that  charm  which  he  deemed  in  early 
days  unnecessary  and  in  later  days  pernicious. 
Apart  from  Dido  there  is  nothing  in  Latin  let- 
ters that  corresponds  with  the  women  of  Greek 
tragedy  or  even  with  Homer's  women.  The 
comedians,  beginning  where  Greek  comedy  left 
off,  deal  with  "little"  women ;  the  few  ladies  of 
their  scenes  are  but  indifferently  rendered. 
The  lyrists  sing  of  light  loves,  humorous  and 
sensual  loves,  and  of  disillusion  and  fatigue. 
The  husband  appears  as  the  conventional  marl 
of  literature,  the  somewhat  fatuous  government 
against  which  the  wife  and  the  lover  are  per- 
petually in  brilliant  opposition.  The  smoulder- 
ing hostility  between  male  and  female  of  this 
strong-willed  race  breaks  now  and  then  into 
flame.  Juvenal's  nerves  are  set  on  edge  by  the 
"new  woman"  of  his  day  just  as  Cato's  had 
been  three  hundred  years  before.  His  indict-, 
ment  of  her  vices  loses  its  effect  by  including  her 


THE  ROMAN  LADY  55 

foibles  and  even  her  good  points.  He  couples 
homicide  with  a  taste  for  literature,  supersti- 
tion with  an  interest  in  public  affairs,  as  alike 
reprehensible.  Cicero's  attack  on  Clodia, 
Catullus's  simultaneous  love  and  hate,  Martial's 
sinister  epigrams,  are  the  most  powerful  ex- 
pressions the  Roman  knew  of  his  feelings  toward 
woman.  Imaginatively  she  did  not  touch  him; 
practically  she  was  a  disturbing  element.  The 
writers  of  Rome  have  defamed  the  Roman  lady 
as  the  French  novelists  have  defamed  the  lady 
of  France.  Just  as  honest  Frenchmen  to-day 
tell  an  incredulous  Anglo-Saxon  world  that 
there  are  French  ladies  of  high  degree  who 
are  pure  and  devoted,  so  the  careful  historian 
of  Rome  must  constantly  remind  his  reader  that 
the  city  never  lacked  for  blameless  ladies.  The 
two  true  inferences  to  be  made  from  the  pre- 
vailing literary  tone  are  that  the  women  of  Rome 
were  active-minded,  impulsive  and  passionate, 
and  that  the  men  of  Rome  had  a  certain  hardness 
of  fibre  that  made  them  very  generally  anti- 
feminist. 

Cicero  was  a  kindly  man,  cultivated  and 
thoughtful;  his  modest  fortune  and  social  posi- 
tion excused  him  from  many  of  the  faults  of 
greater  men,  while  the  respect  justly  entertained 
for  his  talents  and  for  his  character  (since  all 
things  are  relative)  gave  him  a  wide  range  of 


56  THE  LADY 

acquaintance.  It  is  interesting  to  note  in  the 
letters  of  such  a  man  his  reaction  against 
feminism.  Cicero  was  no  contemner  of  women. 
He  disapproved  the  seclusion  of  the  Greek  lady 
and  had  no  wish  to  see  it  introduced  at  Rome, 
but  he  would  have  been  glad  to  see  a  censor 
established  who  should  teach  men  how  to 
govern  their  wives  properly.  His  own  wife, 
Terentia,  presented  few  problems.  She  seems 
to  have  been  a  rather  uninteresting  person  with 
a  fortune  of  her  own,  and  uncertain  health. 
The  bulk  of  her  husband's  letters  to  her  how- 
ever are  full  of  confidence  and  pet-names.  He 
lived  with  her  without  substantial  difference 
for  nearly  thirty  years,  and  then  his  tone  began 
to  change.  The  later  letters  are  merely  formal 
notes,  and  the  last  of  them  is  such,  it  has  been 
said,  as  no  gentleman  would  write  to  his  house- 
keeper. His  next  step  was  to  divorce  his  old 
wife,  on  what  ground  we  do  not  know,  and  to 
marry  the  youthful  Publilia  to  whom  he  was 
not  much  more  civil.  He  dearly  loved  his 
daughter  Tullia  and  suffered  profoundly  from 
her  loss.  But  while  he  was  still  under  its  recent 
shadow  he  writes  to  Atticus :  "Publilia  has 
written  to  tell  me  that  her  mother,  on  the  advice 
of  Publilius,  is  coming  to  see  me  with  him  and 
that  she  will  come  with  them  if  I  will  allow  it: 
she  begs  me  in  many  words  of  entreaty  that  she 


THE  ROMAN  LADY  57 

may  be  allowed  to  do  so,  and  that  I  would  an- 
swer her  letter.  You  see  what  an  unpleasant 
business  it  is.  I  wrote  back  to  say  that  it  would 
be  even  more  painful  than  it  was  when  I  told 
her  that  I  wished  to  be  alone,  and  that  therefore 
I  did  not  wish  her  to  come  to  see  me  at  this 
time.  I  thought  that,  if  I  made  no  answer,  she 
would  come  with  her  mother:  now  I  don't  think 
she  will.  For  it  is  evident  that  her  letter  is 
not  her  own  composition.  Now  this  is  the 
very  thing  I  wish  to  avoid,  which  I  see  will  oc- 
cur— namely,  that  they  will  come  to  my  house : 
and  the  one  way  of  avoiding  it  is  to  fly  away. 
I  would  rather  not,  but  I  must.  I  beg  you  to 
find  out  the  last  day  I  can  remain  here  without 
being  caught."  * 

Cicero's  brother  Quintus  married  Pomponia, 
a  sister  of  Cicero's  friend  Atticus.  Apparently 
he  liked  his  sister-in-law  no  better  than  his  wife. 
At  any  rate  he  writes  of  her  to  Atticus  in  terms 
that  furnish  a  vivid  little  scene  from  the 
comedy  of  manners:  "I  now  come  to  that  last 
line  of  your  letter  written  crossways,  in  which 
you  give  me  a  word  of  caution  about  your  sister. 
The  facts  of  the  matter  are  these.  On  arriving 
at  my  place  at  Arpinum,  my  brother  came  to 
see  me,  and  our  first  subject  of  conversation  was 
yourself,  and  we  discussed  it  at  great  length. 

*  Cicero's  Letters,  trans,  by  Shuckburgh. 


58  THE  LADY 

After  this  I  brought  the  conversation  round  to 
what  you  and  I  had  discussed  at  Tusculum,  on 
the  subject  of  your  sister.  I  never  saw  anything 
so  gentle  and  placable  as  my  brother  was  on 
that  occasion  in  regard  to  your  sister:  so  much 
so,  indeed,  that  if  there  had  been  any  cause  of 
quarrel  on  the  ground  of  expense,  it  was  not 
apparent.  So  much  for  that  day.  Next  day  we 
started  from  Arpinum  and  lunched  at  Arcanum. 
You  know  his  property  there.  When  we  got 
there  Quintus  said,  in  his  kindest  manner, 
Tomponia,  do  you  ask  the  ladies  in;  I  will  in- 
vite the  men.'  Nothing,  as  I  thought,  could  be 
more  courteous,  not  only  in  the  actual  words 
but  also  in  the  intention.  But  she,  in  the  hear- 
ing of  us  all,  exclaimed,  'I  am  only  a  stranger 
here!'  The  origin  of  that  was,  as  I  think,  the 
fact  that  Statius  had  preceded  us  to  look  after 
the  luncheon.  Thereupon  Quintus  said  to  me, 
'There,  that's  what  I  have  to  put  up  with  every 
day!'  You  will  say,  Well,  what  does  that 
amount  to?'  A  great  deal;  and  indeed  she  had 
irritated  even  me:  her  answer  had  been  given 
with  such  unnecessary  acrimony,  both  of  word 
and  look.  I  concealed  my  annoyance.  We  all 
took  our  places  at  table  except  her.  However 
Quintus  sent  her  dishes  from  the  table,  which 
she  declined.  In  short  I  thought  I  never  saw 
anything  better-tempered  than  my  brother  or 


THE  ROMAN  LADY  59 

crosser  than  your  sister:  and  there  were  many 
particulars  which  I  omit  that  raised  my  bile 
more  than  they  did  that  of  Quintus  himself."  * 

These  tiresome  ladies  of  Cicero's  family  were 
by  no  means  votaries  of  the  new  culture;  they 
were  the  surviving  form  of  the  simple  mater- 
familias.  Even  on  them  the  new  conditions  had 
worked,  bringing  migraine  and  irritable  nerves; 
but  they  were  reposeful  in  comparison  with  the 
women  of  the  world,  Clodia,  Sempronia  and 
their  like,  whose  lives  touched  Cicero's.  "Hys- 
teria" begins  to  be  spoken  of  in  literature,  and 
social  history  begins  to  belong  to  the  pathology 
of  fatigue. 

There  was  at  no  time  at  Rome  anything  that 
could  be  called  a  feministic  movement.  No 
solidarity  existed  in  the  sex  split  by  caste  into 
classes  that  had  no  motive  in  common.  The 
ladies  from  time  to  time  organised  to  obtain 
legislation  in  their  interests,  but  as  far  as  we 
know  such  legislation  dealt  only  with  pecuniary 
questions.  We  have  no  record  of  any  attempt 
on  their  part  to  improve  the  lot  of  women  in 
general.  Women  in  general  were  in  fact  sub- 
merged. An  inspection  of  the  literature  and 
the  inscriptions  of  the  late  Republic  and  the 
early  Empire  gives  the  odd  impression  that  the 
Roman  women  of  the  lower  classes  had  pretty 

*  Cicero's  Letters,  trans,  by  Shuckburgh. 


60  THE  LADY 

nearly  ceased  to  exist.  The  professional  woman, 
if  we  may  so  call  her,  the  doctor,  the  ac- 
coucheuse, the  masseuse,  the  actress,  the  dancer, 
the  courtesan,  the  dressmaker,  was  almost 
always  a  Greek.  In  trade  and  industry  the 
same  was  true;  according  to  the  inscriptions, 
Greek  women  were  the  fishmongers,  the  bar- 
maids and  the  laundresses  of  Rome.  No  one 
can  doubt  that  hundreds  of  thousands  of  hard- 
working, god-fearing  Roman  women  lived  si- 
lent, unrecorded  lives,  and  bore  children  to  carry 
on  the  state.  '  But  the  lady  had  nothing  to  do 
with  them.  Her  struggles  were  directed  to  the 
strengthening  of  her  own  position.  It  was  to 
this  end  that  Hortensia  and  her  ladies  came 
down  to  the  forum  to  argue  that  taxation  with- 
out representation  is  tyranny.  When  the  Sec- 
ond Triumvirate  were  driven  to  every  expedi- 
ent to  find  money  for  the  war  with  Brutus  and 
Cassius  they  published  an  edict  requiring  four- 
teen hundred  of  the  richest  women  to  make  a 
valuation  of  their  property  and  to  furnish  for 
the  war  such  portion  as  the  triumvirs  should 
require  from  each.  A  body  of  the  women  con- 
cerned forced  their  way  to  the  tribunal  of  the 
triumvirs  in  the  forum — a  thing  no  man  durst  do 
in  those  days.  Hortensia,  (daughter  of  the 
great  Hortensius,  a  leader  of  the  bar,  Cicero's 


THE  ROMAN  LADY  61 

rival,  Verres'  counsel,)  was  their  spokesman. 
Appian  gives  us  her  speech : 

"As  is  befitting  women  of  our  rank  addressing 
a  petition  to  you,  we  had  recourse  to  your  fe- 
male relatives.  Having  suffered  unseemly 
treatment  on  the  part  of  Fulvia,  we  have  been 
compelled  to  visit  the  forum.  You  have  de- 
prived us  of  our  fathers,  our  sons,  our  husbands 
and  our  brothers,  whom  you  accuse  of  having 
wronged  you.  If  you  take  away  our  property 
also,  you  reduce  us  to  a  condition  unbecoming 
our  birth.  If  we  women  have  not  voted  you 
public  enemies,  have  not  torn  down  your 
houses  or  led  an  army  against  you,  why  do  you 
visit  upon  us  the  same  punishment  as  upon  the 
guilty,  whose  offences  we  have  not  shared? 
Why  should  we  pay  taxes  when  we  have  no 
part  in  the  honours,  the  commands,  the  state- 
craft for  which  you  contend?  'Because  this  is 
a  time  of  war,'  do  you  say?  Let  war  with  the 
Gauls  or  the  Parthians  come,  and  we  shall  not 
be  inferior  to  our  mothers  in  zeal  for  the  com- 
mon safety;  but  for  civil  wars  may  we  never 
contribute." 

"When  Hortensia  had  thus  spoken,"  says 
Appian,  "the  triumvirs  were  angry  that  women 
should  dare  to  hold  a  public  meeting  when  the 
men  were  silent.  They  ordered  the  lictors  to 


62  THE  LADY 

drive  them  away  from  the  tribunal,  which  they 
proceeded  to  do  until  cries  were  raised  by  the 
multitude  outside,  when  the  lictors  desisted  and 
the  triumvirs  said  they  would  postpone  till  the 
next  day  the  consideration  of  the  matter.  On 
the  following  day  they  reduced  the  number  of 
women  from  fourteen  hundred  to  four  hun- 
dred." * 

Public  speaking  had  no  terrors  for  the  Ro- 
man lady.  We  read  of  women  of  litigious 
temperament  who  were  constantly  at  law,  and 
who  argued  their  own  cases  in  the  praetor's 
court  and  in  the  forum.  The  practice  was  prev- 
alent enough  to  need  an  edict  to  suppress  it. 
Business  on  a  large  scale  sometimes  provided  an 
outlet  for  the  energies  of  the  restless,  able  and 
idle  domlna.  The  manufacture  of  bricks  seems 
to  have  been  largely  in  her  hands,  for  almost 
every  Roman  brick  is  stamped  with  the  name 
of  its  maker,  and  the  names  of  many  great 
ladies,  including  even  empresses,  are  handed 
down  to  us  on  the  remnants  of  their  product. 

*Appian,  trans,  by  Horace  White. 


Faustina. 
From  the  statue  in  the  Louvre. 


See  f.  68 


THE  ROMAN  LADY  63 

III 

THE  great  field,  however,  for  the  activ- 
ity of  the  Roman  lady  was  the  exertion 
of  her  personal  influence  and  the  de- 
velopment of  her  power  in  political  and  social 
intrigue.  The  amorous  intrigue,  for  which 
she  is  perhaps  most  famous,  should  be  subordi- 
nated to  the  other  two,  for  it  was  apparently  in 
many  cases  their  handmaid.  Like  the  male  of 
her  kind  the  Roman  lady  was  possessed  of  great 
sexual  excitability  and  she  indulged  it  as  freely 
as  he.  In  her  case  as  in  his,  love  turned  easily 
to  hate  and  even  more  easily  to  ennui.  Like 
him,  while  indulging  passion  she  despised  its 
object.  Like  him,  she  judged  power  and 
money  to  be  the  great  goods.  Clodia  and 
Sempronia  are  men  in  petticoats ;  they  have  the 
hot  blood  and  the  cool  heads  of  men ;  their  love- 
liness is  the  poisoned  weapon  with  which  they 
carry  on  the  sex  war. 

The  tendency  towards  concentration  of  power 
in  the  hands  of  two  or  three  men  gave  the  Ro- 
man lady  a  more  dazzling  opportunity.  Nero 
wished  that  the  people  had  but  one  neck;  the 
lady's  more  reasonable  desire  was  attained  when 
the  governing  power  had  but  one  heart.  The 
women  of  the  Triumvirates  are  hardly  less 
striking  figures  than  the  men.  The  empire  saw 


64  THE  LADY 

a  succession  of  masterful  women,  indistinguish- 
able psychologically  from  the  male.  Augustus 
caused  public  honours  to  be  accorded  to  his 
wife  and  to  his  sister.  Tacitus  was  struck 
by  the  significant  novelty  of  a  woman  enthroned 
when  Agrippina  was  seated  near  Claudius  to 
review  a  Roman  army.  With  the  Antonines 
titles  for  women  began  to  develop,  "mother  of 
the  legions,"  "mother  of  the  senate  and  the  peo- 
ple." It  was  debated  in  the  senate  whether 
magistrates  sent  to  govern  the  provinces  should 
be  permitted  to  take  their  wives  with  them,  and 
in  the  course  of  the  discussion  conservative 
opinion  declared  that  the  official  ladies  were 
altogether  too  active  in  political  matters.  The 
governor's  wife  was  a  force.  All  the  intrigues 
of  the  province  centred  in  her;  she  had  her 
finger  in  every  pie ;  even  military  discipline  got 
into  her  department.  She  would  appear  on 
horseback  beside  her  husband,  inspect  drill,  and 
harangue  the  troops.  Many  a  sturdy  Roman 
seems  to  have  felt  towards  this  efficient  lady  as 
the  Rev.  Mr.  Crawley  felt  towards  Mrs. 
Proudy,  and  to  have  said  as  he  did,  "Woman, 
the  distaff  were  more  fitting  for  youl" 

The  great  lady  of  the  empire  was  aware  that 
the  splendour  of  her  position  placed  her  above 
criticism,  or  at  any  rate  above  any  painful  re- 
sults from  it,  and  this  consciousness  reinforced 


THE  ROMAN  LADY  65 

the  tendency  she  had  always  had  to  let  herself 
go.  Very  far  indeed  she  went.  As  in  the  case 
of  the  man  of  her  kind,  very  brutal  pleasures 
and  very  crude  vice  were  needed  to  stimulate 
her  nerves.  It  was  an  extraordinary  age  and 
produced  many  phenomena  that  belong  to  the 
department  of  pathology.  Its  moralists  de- 
lighted to  paint  its  blackness ;  but  in  more  cases 
than  one  the  moralists  knew  by  hearsay  only  of 
the  wickedness  of  great  ladies,  being  themselves 
surrounded  by  pure  and  gentle  women. 

It  is  very  plain  that  the  Roman  resented  and 
dreaded  the  development  in  his  womankind  of 
the  desire  to  please.  The  old  Roman  lady,  ac- 
cording to  tradition,  had  entertained  no  such 
desire.  She  rested,  like  a  man,  on  her  sterling 
qualities.  To  be  charming  was,  in  Roman 
eyes,  an  admission  both  of  weakness  and  of 
ambition.  Unless  a  woman  wanted  something 
she  ought  not  to  have,  she  had  no  need  of 
charm;  and  if  she  stooped  to  its  use  it  must  be 
because  she  had  not  the  force  of  brains  and 
character  to  reach  her  end  by  more  manly 
means.  Why  did  an  honest  woman  wish  to  be 
attractive?  Whom  should  she  attract  but  her 
husband,  who,  by  hypothesis,  was  sufficiently 
attracted  already?  Tacitus  says  of  Livia  that 
"she  was  more  gracious  in  manners  than  would 
have  been  approved  in  a  woman  of  the  olden 


66  THE  LADY 

time."  The  rhetor  Porcius  Latro  declared 
that  a  lady  who  wished  to  be  safe  from  insult- 
ing advances  should  bestow  only  so  much  care 
on  her  toilet  as  not  to  be  dirty.  She  should  be 
accompanied  by  elderly  maidservants  whose 
respectability  would  warn  off  the  enterprising. 
She  should  walk  with  downcast  eyes,  and  if  she 
met  a  pertinacious  admirer,  she  should  be  rude 
rather  than  encouraging.  But  such  (said  he) 
was  not  the  conduct  of  women  of  the  world. 
They  ran  to  meet  temptation.  Their  faces  were 
arranged  for  seduction,  their  bodies  were  just 
covered  and  that  was  all,  their  talk  was  charm- 
ing and  witty,  and  their  manner  was  so  caress- 
ing that  any  man  dared  approach  them. 

The  Roman  lady  had  in  fact  discovered  the 
smokeless  powder  that  put  her  on  a  somewhat 
less  unequal  military  footing  with  the  enemy. 
Social  changes  in  Rome  had  brought  her  from 
the  privacy  of  her  own  house  into  the  world  of 
society.  She  found  herself  at  the  head  of  a 
great  establishment,  with  town-house  and  coun- 
try-house, with  a  round  of  magnificent  enter- 
tainment to  offer  and  to  receive,  and  with  more 
money  to  spend  than  Europe  had  ever  seen  col- 
lected before  or  would  see  again  for  many  cen- 
turies. Supposing  her  singly  devoted  to  her 
husband,  she  found  she  could  be  of  immense 
assistance  to  his  career.  Often,  too,  she  found 


THE  ROMAN  LADY  67 

that  she  must  compete  with  other  women  for 
his  admiration.  An  attractive  demi-monde, 
chiefly  Greek,  had  become  an  institution  in 
Rome.  It  behooved  a  wife  to  be  as  charming 
and  as  intelligent  as  the  ladies  without  the  pale. 
The  art  of  fascination  once  learned,  it  was  dif- 
ficult not  to  keep  it  in  practice  at  the  expense  of 
the  first  comer.  And  when  a  woman  had  dis- 
covered that  she  counted  for  something  in  her 
husband's  career,  she  not  unnaturally  aspired  to 
a  career  of  her  own.  Seneca  expressed  suc- 
cinctly the  dilemma  in  which  the  Roman  found 
himself:  it  is  hard,  said  he,  to  keep  a  wife  whom 
everyone  admires;  and  if  no  one  admires  her 
it  is  hard  to  have  to  live  with  her,  yourself. 

We  have  a  great  deal  of  detailed  information 
about  the  ladies  of  Rome.  Many  are  known  to 
us  by  name,  and  we  are  aware  of  the  impression 
they  made  on  their  contemporaries.  We 
should  not  be  helped  in  differentiating  them 
from  other  ladies  by  opening  a  ledger  and  set- 
ting down  the  good  against  the  bad,  Calpurnia 
against  Faustina  and  Alcmene  against  Trimal- 
chio's  wife.  The  trait  that  is  interesting  for 
our  purpose  is  present  in  good  and  bad  alike. 
The  Roman  lady  was  a  person ;  indeed,  she  was 
often  what  we  call  a  "character."  She  is  dis- 
tinguished from  the  Athenian  lady  as  a  statue 
in  the  round  is  distinguished  from  a  relief. 


68  THE  LADY 

Once  for  all  she  was  detached  from  the  back- 
ground of  family  life  and,  not  supported 
throughout  her  height  by  the  fabric  of  society, 
must  see  to  it  that  her  personal  centre  of  gravity 
should  not  lie  without  her  base.  She  commit- 
ted her  own  sins  and  bore  her  own  punishment. 
Her  virtues  were  her  own  and  did  not  often 
take  the  direction  of  self-effacement.  The 
strong  men  among  whom  she  lived,  who  broke 
everything  else,  could  not  break  her. 


THE  LADY  ABBESS 


"Set  a  price  on  thy  love.    Thou  canst  not  name  so  much  but 
I  will  give  thee  for  thy  love  much  more." — ANCREN  RIWLE. 

THE  economic  paradox  that  confronts 
women  in  general  is  especially  uncom- 
promising for  the  lady.  In  defiance  of 
the  axiom  that  he  who  works,  eats,  the  lady 
who  works  has  less  to  eat  than  the  lady  who  does 
not.  There  is  no  profession  open  to  her  that  is 
nearly  as  lucrative  as  marriage,  and  the  more 
lucrative  the  marriage  the  less  work  it  involves. 
The  economic  prizes  are  therefore  awarded  in 
such  a  way  as  directly  to  discourage  productive 
activity  on  the  part  of  the  lady.  If  a  brother 
and  sister  are  equally  qualified  for,  let  us  say, 
the  practice  of  medicine,  the  brother  has,  be- 
sides the  scientific  motive,  the  economic  motive. 
The  ardent  pursuit  of  his  profession  will  if  suc- 
cessful make  him  a  rich  man.  His  sister  on 
the  other  hand  will  never  earn  absolutely  as 
much  money  as  he,  and  relatively  her  earnings 
will  be  negligible  in  comparison  with  her  in- 
come if  she  should  marry  a  millionaire.  But 


70  THE  LADY 

if  she  be  known  to  have  committed  herself  to  the 
study  of  medicine  her  chance  of  marrying  a 
millionaire  is  practically  eliminated. 

Apart  from  the  crude  economic  question,  the 
things  that  most  women  mean  when  they  speak 
of  "happiness,"  that  is,  love  and  children  and 
the  little  republic  of  the  home,  depend  upon 
the  favour  of  men,  and  the  qualities  that  win  this 
favour  are  not  in  general  those  that  are  most  use- 
ful for  other  purposes.  A  girl  should  not  be 
too  intelligent  or  too  good  or  too  highly  differ- 
entiated in  any  direction.  Like  a  ready-made 
garment  she  should  be  designed  to  fit  the  aver- 
age man.  She  should  have  "just  about  as  much 
religion  as  my  William  likes."  The  age-long 
operation  of  this  rule,  by  which  the  least 
strongly  individualised  women  are  the  most 
likely  to  have  a  chance  to  transmit  their  qual- 
ities, has  given  it  the  air  of  a  natural  law. 
Though  the  lady  has  generally  yielded  it  unques- 
tioning obedience,  she  often  dreams  of  a  land 
like  that  of  the  Amazons,  where  she  might  be 
judged  on  her  merits  instead  of  on  her  charms. 
Seeing  that  in  the  world  a  woman's  social  posi- 
tion, her  daily  food,  her  chance  of  children,  de- 
pend on  her  exerting  sufficient  charm  to  induce 
some  man  to  assume  the  responsibility  and  ex- 
pense of  maintaining  her  for  life,  and  that  the 
qualities  on  which  this  charm  depends  are  some- 


THE  LADY  ABBESS  71 

times  altogether  unattainable  by  a  given  woman, 
it  is  not  surprising  that  exceptional  women 
are  willing  to  eliminate  from  their  lives  the 
whole  question  of  marriage  and  motherhood, 
for  the  sake  of  a  free  development  irrespective 
of  its  bearing  on  the  other  sex. 

No  institution  in  Europe  has  ever  won  for 
the  lady  the  freedom  of  development  that  she 
enjoyed  in  the  convent  in  the  early  days.  The 
modern  college  for  women  only  feebly  repro- 
duces it,  since  the  college  for  women  has  arisen 
at  a  time  when  colleges  in  general  are  under  a 
cloud.  The  lady-abbess  on  the  other  hand  was 
part  of  the  two  great  social  forces  of  her  time, 
feudalism  and  the  church.  Great  spiritual  re- 
wards and  great  worldly  prizes  were  alike 
within  her  grasp.  She  was  treated  as  an  equal 
by  the  men  of  her  class,  as  is  witnessed  by  letters 
we  still  have  from  popes  and  emperors  to  ab- 
besses. She  had  the  stimulus  of  competition 
with  men  in  executive  capacity,  in  scholarship 
and  in  artistic  production,  since  her  work  was 
freely  set  before  the  general  public ;  but  she  was 
relieved  by  the  circumstances  of  her  environ- 
ment of  the  ceaseless  competition  in  common 
life  of  woman  with  woman  for  the  favour  of  the 
individual  man.  In  the  cloister  of  the  great 
days,  as  on  a  small  scale  in  the  college  for 
women  to-day,  women  were  judged  by  each 


72  THE  LADY 

other,  as  men  are  everywhere  judged  by  each 
other,  for  sterling  qualities  of  head  and  heart 
and  character.  The  strongest  argument  against 
the  coeducational  college  is  that  the  presence 
of  the  male  brings  in  the  factor  of  sexual  selec- 
tion, and  the  girl  who  is  elected  to  the  class- 
office  is  not  necessarily  the  ablest  or  the  wisest 
or  the  kindest,  but  the  possessor  of  the  longest 
eyelashes.  The  lady  does  not  often  rise  to  the 
point  of  deciding  against  sex.  The  choice 
is  a  cruel  one,  and  in  the  individual  case  the  re- 
wards of  the  ascetic  course  are  too  small  and 
too  uncertain.  At  no  other  time  than  the  aristo- 
cratic period  of  the  cloister  have  the  rewards 
so  preponderated  as  to  carry  her  over  in  num- 
bers. In  studying  this  interesting  phenomenon 
we  must  divest  our  minds  of  the  conventional 
picture  of  the  nun.  The  Little  Sister  of  the 
Poor  is  the  product  of  a  number  of  social  mo- 
tives that  had  not  begun  to  operate  when  the 
lady-abbess  came  into  being.  In  fact  her  day 
is  almost  over  when  the  Poor  Clares  appear. 
Her  roots  lie  in  a  society  that  is  pre-feudal, 
though  feudalism  played  into  her  hand,  and  in 
a  psychology  that  is  pre-Christian,  though  she 
ruled  in  the  name  of  Christ. 

The  worship  of  Demeter  the  mother-goddess 
which  was  one  of  the  central  facts  of  Greek  re- 
ligious life  spread  and  flourished  in  the  west. 


THE  LADY  ABBESS  73 

Sicily,  the  granary  of  the  ancient  world,  became 
naturally  in  legend  the  scene  of  the  rape  of 
Persephone  and  of  the  wanderings  of  her 
mother,  the  giver  of  grain  to  men.  The  Ro- 
mans adopted  the  worship  of  this  ancient 
hypostasis  of  woman's  share  in  primitive  cul- 
ture, ranging  it  beside  the  cult  of  their  own 
Bona  Dea  and  sometimes  confusing  the  two. 
Catana  was  one  of  the  places  where  the  great 
festivals  of  the  Lesser  and  the  Greater  Eleu- 
sinia  were  celebrated  in  spring  and  autumn 
with  high  devotion  and  with  all  the  pomp  of 
the  rubric.  The  main  features  of  the  festival 
were  everywhere  the  same;  the  carrying  on  a 
cart  through  the  streets  of  the  symbolic  pome- 
granate and  poppy-seed,  the  great  procession 
walking  with  torches  far  into  the  night  to 
typify  the  search  of  the  goddess  for  her  child, 
the  mumming,  the  ringing  of  bells,  the  exhibi- 
tion of  the  sacred  veil,  the  mystic  meal  of  bread 
for  the  initiate  and  the  mystic  pouring  out  of 
wine.  At  Catana,  as  Ovid  tells  us,  these  cus- 
tomary elements  of  the  feast  were  supplemented 
by  a  horse-race. 

Miss  Eckenstein  (to  whose  important  Woman 
under  Monasticism  I  am  indebted  at  every  turn) 
calls  attention  to  the  description  given  early  in 
the  last  century  by  the  English  traveller  Blunt 
of  the  festival  of  Saint  Agatha  as  he  saw  it  in 


74  THE  LADY 

Catania  and,  I  may  add,  as  it  is  celebrated  there 
to  this  day.  It  begins  with  a  horse-race  and 
its  chief  event,  next  to  the  mass,  is  a  great  pro- 
cession, lasting  into  the  night,  in  which  the  par- 
ticipants carry  torches  and  ring  bells  as  they 
follow  a  waggon  which  bears  the  relics  of  the 
saint,  among  them  her  veil  and  her  breasts,  torn 
off  by  her  persecutors.  The  saint  has  two  fes- 
tivals yearly,  one  in  the  autumn  and  one  in  the 
spring.  It  remains  to  point  out  that  though 
it  is  disputed  whether  the  breasts  were  or  were 
not  part  of  the  ancient  ritual,  they  are  a  likely 
enough  symbol  of  exuberance.  Also,  "Agatha" 
is  the  Greek  word  for  "Bona,"  and  does  not  oc- 
cur as  a  proper  name  before  the  appearance  of 
the  saint.  But  the  Acta  Sanctorum  knows  all 
about  Saint  Agatha,  a  Christian  virgin  and 
martyr  of  Catania  in  the  third  century,  and  is 
able  to  give  full  details  of  her  parentage  and 
history,  adding  that  her  fame  spread  at  an  early 
date  into  Italy  and  Greece. 

The  process  here  visible  went  on  everywhere 
as  Christianity  spread  in  Europe.  The  places, 
the  persons  and  the  ritual  of  heathen  worship 
were  taken  in  bodily  by  the  new  religion  with 
a  more  or  less  successful  effort  at  assimilation. 
Not  only  the  classic  cults  of  Greece  and  Rome 
but  the  cruder  religions  of  the  barbarians  of  the 
north  were  to  be  conciliated.  And  in  all  of 


THE  LADY  ABBESS  75 

these,  classic  and  crude  alike,  the  old  status  of 
woman  was  abundantly  reflected.  A  purely 
patriarchal  religion  would  not  serve;  the  Virgin 
and  the  female  saints  became  more  and  more 
necessary  to  bridge  the  chasm.  It  is  not  by  ac- 
cident that  the  festivals  of  the  Virgin  so  often 
coincide  with  those  of  heathen  deities,  for  in 
the  seventh  century  Pope  Sergius  ordered 
that  this  should  be  so  as  a  matter  of 
policy.  In  the  long  centuries  needed  for  the 
Christianising  of  Europe,  heathendom  reacted 
powerfully  on  the  new  faith.  Local  saints 
everywhere  are  its  work.  In  the  early  days  a 
saint  needed  not  to  be  canonised  by  Rome;  it 
was  necessary  only  that  he  should  be  entered  in 
a  local  calendar,  and  the  local  calendar  was  in 
the  hands  of  local  dignitaries  of  the  church. 
Under  pressure  of  popular  demand  every 
sacred  place  in  heathendom  bade  fair  to  have  its 
saint,  and  many  of  these  improvised  saints  were 
gradually  fitted  out  with  legends  and  historical 
relations.  It  was  not  until  the  twelfth  century 
that  Rome  felt  that  the  process  had  gone  far 
enough  and  withdrew  the  power  of  canonisa- 
tion into  her  own  hands. 

Although  the  German  tribes  were  already 
patriarchal  in  organisation  when  they  came  in 
contact  with  the  Romans,  they  carried  abun- 
dant evidence  in  their  traditions,  their  customs 


76  THE  LADY 

and  their  cults  of  an  earlier  social  system.  The 
queen  of  saga  and  of  history,  the  tribal-mother 
with  her  occult  powers  and  her  status  of 
priestess  to  goddesses  who  were  also  tribal,  the 
recognised  existence  of  certain  bodies  of  women 
outside  the  family,  are  all  survivals  of  the 
mother-age  with  its  primitive  culture  and 
social  organisation.  .With  these  various  phe- 
nomena the  church  dealt  in  various  ways: 
roughly  we  may  say  that  the  tribal  goddess  she 
used  as  a  saint,  the  priestess  she  banned  as  a 
witch;  the  unattached  woman  she  segregated 
under  a  somewhat  summary  classification  as 
either  nun  or  castaway.  There  seems  to  be  no 
doubt  that  we  must  regard  the  immense  pop- 
ularity of  the  convent  in  Europe  in  early  times 
as  largely  due  to  the  uneasiness  of  women  under 
a  patriarchal  regime.  We  think  to-day  of  the 
cloister  as  a  refuge  from  the  distracting  liberty 
of  secular  life;  it  seems  paradoxical  and  yet  it 
is  apparently  true  that  the  women  of  early 
Christendom  fled  from  the  constraint  of  home 
to  the  expansion  of  the  cloister.  Under  patri- 
archalism  the  problem  of  the  unassigned  woman 
becomes  one  of  considerable  perplexity  to 
herself  and  to  society.  A  stigma  is  attached 
to  her  which  acts  as  a  detriment  to  rebels 
in  the  ranks.  The  "loose,"  i.  e.,  the  unattached, 
woman  is  sharply  marked  off  from  the  lady,  so 


THE  LADY  ABBESS  77 

that  the  choice  lies  between  the  constraints  of 
social  and  economic  dependence  on  the  one 
hand  and  social  outlawry  on  the  other.  These 
considerations  account  for  the  fact  that  the  nun 
of  early  northern  Christianity  was  by  no  means 
a  type  of  self-effacement  but  was  often  a  spirited 
and  sometimes  a  lawless  person,  and  that  the 
abbess  was  more  generally  than  not  a  woman 
of  good  birth,  strong  character  and  independent 
ways.  Sometimes  she  had  tried  marriage, 
sometimes  she  had  condemned  it  without  a  trial. 
It  offered  little  scope  for  the  free  development 
of  women,  but  there  were  many  women  insisting 
on  free  development.  To  such  the  convent 
was  a  godsend,  and  we  may  almost  say  that 
the  lady-abbess  is  the  successor  of  the  saga- 
heroine.  Monasticism  as  the  Eastern  world 
practised  it  was  by  no  means  congenial  in  gen- 
eral to  the  Prankish  habit  of  mind.  The  worn- 
out  races  embraced  it  as  a  refuge  from  the 
growing  difficulties  of  life  with  which  they  had 
no  longer  energy  to  cope.  The  fresh  races 
on  the  other  hand  had  an  immense  amount  of 
the  will  to  live  to  work  off  before  they  in  their 
turn  should  dwindle  toward  self-effacement, 
abnegation  and  the  meeker  virtues.  The  men 
among  the  Franks  felt  no  call  to  the  cloister. 
There  is  small  record  of  Prankish  princes  en- 
tering the  convent  of  their  free  will.  For  men 


78  THE  LADY 

the  world  was  too  full  of  opportunity.  But 
maidens,  wives  and  widows  of  the  royal  house 
joined  religious  communities,  not  because  they 
were  spiritually  unlike  their  men,  but  because 
they  were  like  them.  The  impulse  toward 
leadership  which  kept  the  men  in  the  world  sent 
the  women  out  of  it.  Radegund,  founder  of 
the  convent  of  Poitiers,  was  fifth  among  the 
seven  recognised  wives  of  King  Clothair.  She 
was  a  princess  of  the  untamed  Thuringians, 
whom  Clothair  captured  with  her  brother  on 
one  of  his  raids  into  the  eastern  wilds.  She 
was  a  person  of  great  spirit  and  perfect  personal 
courage.  She  was  the  sort  of  woman  (her 
biographers  say)  who  keeps  her  husband's  din- 
ner waiting  while  she  visits  the  sick,  and 
annoys  him  by  her  open  preference  for  the 
society  of  learned  clerks.  When  finally  she 
made  up  her  mind  to  leave  her  husband  she 
fastened  upon  an  unhappy  prelate,  Bishop 
Medardus  of  Noyon,  the  dangerous  task  of 
sealing  her  from  the  world.  "If  you  refuse  to 
consecrate  me,"  she  said  grimly,  "a  lamb  will 
be  lost  to  the  flock."  The  bishop  quailed  be- 
fore the  lamb  and  Radegund  entered  the  life 
at  Poitiers  that  gave  play  to  her  great  powers 
of  organisation,  diplomacy  and  leadership. 
Her  nuns  were  her  true  spiritual  children. 
After  her  death  two  rival  claimants  for  the 


THE  LADY  ABBESS  79 

office  of  abbess  contended  even  with  violence. 
Leubover  was  the  regularly  appointed  succes- 
sor, but  Chrodield,  daughter  and  cousin  of 
kings,  heading  a  faction  attacked  and  put  to 
flight  the  clerics  who  excommunicated  her 
party.  Gregory  of  Tours  tells  how  Chrodield, 
having  collected  about  her  a  band  of  murderers 
and  vagrants  of  all  kinds,  dwelt  in  open  revolt 
and  ordered  her  followers  to  break  into  the 
nunnery  at  night  and  forcibly  to  bear  off  the 
abbess.  But  the  abbess,  who  was  suffering 
from  a  gouty  foot,  on  hearing  the  noise  of  their 
approach  asked  to  be  carried  before  the  shrine 
of  the  Holy  Ghost.  The  rebels  rushed  in  with 
swords  and  lances,  and,  mistaking  in  the  dark, 
the  prioress  for  the  abbess,  carried  her  off, 
dishevelled  and  stripped  of  her  cloak.  The 
bishops  were  afraid  to  enter  Poitiers  and  the 
nuns  kept  the  district  terrorised  until  the  king 
sent  troops  to  reduce  them.  Only  after  the 
soldiers  had  actually  charged  them,  cutting  them 
down  with  sword  and  spear,  was  the  neighbour- 
hood at  peace.  It  was  not  with  these  ladies  in 
mind  that  Wordsworth  found  the  sunset-hour  as 
"quiet  as  a  nun." 

The  women-saints  of  England  are  all  Anglo- 
Saxon;  after  the  coming  of  the  Normans  there 
are  no  more  of  them.  And  these  early  saints 
were  generally  ladies  of  high  degree.  Hilda, 


8o  THE  LADY 

the  famous  abbess  of  Whitby,  was  grandniece 
of  Edwin,  king  of  Northumbria.  The  first 
religious  settlement  for  women  in  England  was 
founded  by  Enswith,  daughter  of  Edbald,  king 
of  Kent.  This  Christian  princess  was  sought  in 
marriage  by  a  heathen  king  of  Northumbria 
whom  she  challenged  to  prove  the  power  of  his 
gods  by  inducing  them  miraculously  to  lengthen 
a  beam.  The  suitor  failed  and  withdrew. 
Enswith  herself  without  difficulty  caused  a 
stream  to  flow  up  hill.  Bede's  statement  that 
the  ladies  of  his  day  were  sent  to  the  continent 
to  be  educated  is  borne  out  by  what  we  know  of 
Saint  Mildred,  abbess  of  Upminster  in  ThaneL 
She  was  sent  as  a  girl  to  Chelles,  where,  among 
other  adventures,  she  was  cast  by  the  abbess  into 
a  burning  furnace  for  contumacy  but  escaped 
unhurt.  When  she  returned  to  England  she 
stepped  from  the  vessel  upon  a  flat  stone  which 
retained  the  print  of  her  feet.  Nay,  more,  says 
her  chronicler:  "the  dust  that  was  scrapen  off 
thence  being  drunk  did  cure  sundry  diseases." 
A  blood-fine  being  due  her  from  Egbert,  king 
of  Kent,  she  was  promised  as  much  land  as  her 
deer  could  run  over  in  one  course,  and  the  ani- 
mal covered  ten  thousand  acres  of  the  best  land 
in  Kent. 

We  obtain  a  glimpse  of  the  culture  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon     nun    by     consulting    the     cor- 


THE  LADY  ABBESS  81 

respondence  of  St.  Boniface,  the  friend  of  many 
cloistered  ladies.  They  write  to  him  in  fluent 
Latin  on  many  different  subjects ;  one  sends  him 
some  hexameter  verses,  another  sends  him  fifty 
gold-pieces  and  an  altar-cloth.  One  says,  "I 
prefer  thee  almost  to  all  others  of  the  masculine 
sex  in  affectionate  love;"  another  "salutes  her 
revered  lover  in  Christ;"  yet  another  says,  "I 
shall  always  cling  to  thy  neck  with  sisterly 
embraces."  Like  other  priests  in  all  ages  the 
good  bishop  is  greatly  comforted  in  times  of 
discouragement  by  the  affection  of  his  feminine 
admirers.  He  begs  one  of  them  to  finish  the 
copy  of  the  epistles  of  Peter  which  she  had 
begun  to  write  for  him  in  letters  of  gold.  He 
responds  to  all  their  philandering  with  advice 
and  sentiment  and  little  presents.  The  noble 
Edburga,  abbess  of  a  house  in  Devonshire  which 
she  freely  left  to  reside  in  Rome,  is  "his  dearest 
lady  and  in  Christ's  love  to  be  preferred  to  all 
others  of  the  female  sex."  Nevertheless  he 
does  not  approve  of  continental  travel  for 
Anglo-Saxon  nuns,  and  writes  to  Cuthbert  of 
Canterbury:  "I  will  not  withhold  from  your 
holiness  that  it  were  a  good  thing  if  the  synod 
and  your  princes  forbade  women,  and  those 
who  have  taken  the  veil,  to  travel  and  stay 
abroad  as  they  do.  For  there  are  very  few 
districts  of  Lombardy  in  which  there  is  not 


82  THE  LADY 

some  woman  of  Anglian  origin  living  a  loose 
life  among  the  Franks  and  the  Gauls.  This  is 
a  scandal  and  disgrace  to  your  whole  church." 

The  composite  photograph  of  the  correspond- 
ents of  Boniface  shows  a  lady  as  important  as  a 
man,  as  well  educated  and  as  economically  free 
as  a  man,  thoroughly  understanding  the  politics 
of  her  time  and  taking  a  hand  in  them,  standing 
solidly  on  her  own  feet  and  sweetening  existence 
with  the  harmless  sentimentalism  so  much  used 
by  men.  She  has  contrived  that  love,  if  not 
banished  from  her  life,  should  be  a  thing  apart, 
not  her  whole  existence. 

The  foundation  of  great  abbeys  like  Thanet 
and  Ely,  Whitby  and  Barking,  was  the  result  of 
the  Anglo-Saxon  social  organisation  which 
allowed  women  in  some  cases  to  hold  real 
property,  just  as  the  existence  of  the  female 
saint  was  due  to  the  Teutonic  estimate  of  the 
personal  value  of  women.  After  the  social 
ideas  of  the  Normans  became  dominant,  there 
were  in  England  no  more  women-saints  and  few 
more  abbeys  for  women  were  founded.  The 
new  settlements  for  religious  women  after  the 
conquest  were  generally  priories,  and  the 
prioress  was  of  very  inferior  importance  to  the 
abbess.  But  though  the  abbess  owed  her  ex- 
istence to  an  earlier  social  system,  she  was 
rather  strengthened  than  weakened  by  the  ap- 


THE  LADY  ABBESS  83 

plication  to  her  case  of  feudal  principles. 
Being  always  a  landlord  and  sometimes  a  very 
great  one,  she  shared  the  prestige  of  the  land- 
lord class.  She  was  in  some  cases  of  such 
quality  as  to  hold  of  the  king  "by  an  entire 
barony."  By  right  of  tenure  she  had  the  privi- 
lege at  one  period  of  being  summoned  to 
parliament.  She  drew  two  incomes,  spirituali- 
ties from  the  churches  in  her  jurisdiction  and 
temporalities  from  her  lands.  Her  manors 
often  lay  in  several  different  shires,  at  a  con- 
siderable distance  from  the  abbey.  It  was  pro- 
fanely said  that  if  the  abbot  of  Glastonbury 
were  to  marry  the  abbess  of  Shrewsbury,  their 
heir  would  own  more  land  than  the  king.  This 
abbess  had  in  her  gift  several  prebends;  in  the 
reign  of  Henry  I  she  found  seven  knights  for 
the  king's  service,  and  she  held  her  own  courts 
for  pleas  of  debts  and  the  like.  The  great 
capacity  for  business  necessary  to  conduct  the 
affairs  of  so  complex  a  position  seems  to  have 
been  possessed  by  the  average  abbess,  for  the 
property  of  the  old  houses  at  the  time  of  the 
dissolution  was  in  a  very  flourishing  condition. 
Among  the  Saxons  on  the  continent  the 
aristocratic  tone  of  the  convent  was  fully  as 
marked.  Whole  families  of  royal  princesses 
took  the  veil,  rather  gaining  the  world  than 
losing  it  by  the  step.  As  in  England,  the  abbess 


84  THE  LADY 

was  virtually  a  baron.  She  was  overlord 
often  of  an  immense  property,  holding  directly 
from  the  king.  Like  a  baron  she  had  the  right 
of  ban,  she  sent  her  contingent  of  armed  knights 
into  the  field,  she  issued  the  summons  to  her  own 
courts,  she  was  summoned  to  the  Reichstag,  and 
in  some  instances  she  struck  her  own  coins.  The 
abbess  was  in  close  relations  with  the  court  and 
imperial  politics.  Matilda  abbess  of  Quedlin- 
burg  was  twice  regent  for  her  nephew  Otto  III, 
dealt  strongly  in  that  capacity  with  the  invading 
Wends  and  summoned  a  diet  on  her  own 
authority. 

Under  the  presidency  of  great  ladies  of  this 
type  the  abbeys  everywhere  before  the  twelfth 
century  were  centres  where  the  daughters  of 
nobles  might  live  a  pleasant  life  and  receive 
such  education  as  the  time  afforded.  The 
early  nun  was  not  even  in  form  what  we  com- 
monly think  of  by  that  name.  She  was  not 
always  bound  by  vows,  nor  distinguished  by 
her  habit,  nor  even  required  to  live  in  a  par- 
ticular place.  Originally  she  as  often  as  not  re- 
mained in  the  world  though  dedicated  to  God. 
When  she  was  attached  to  a  convent  it  was 
difficult  to  find  means  to  constrain  her  to  stay 
in  it.  We  have  seen  how  Boniface  wrote  to 
Cuthbert  on  this  subject.  Eldhelm  in  the 
eighth  century  describes  thus  the  dress  of  the 


2. 


THE  LADY  ABBESS  85 

nuns  of  his  time:  "A  vest  of  fine  linen  of  a 
violet  colour  is  worn,  above  it  a  scarlet  tunic 
with  a  hood,  sleeves  striped  with  silk  and 
trimmed  with  red  fur;  the  locks  on  the  fore- 
head and  the  temples  are  curled  with  a  crisp- 
ing-iron,  the  dark  head-veil  is  given  up  for 
white  and  coloured  head-dresses  which,  with 
bows  of  ribbon  sewn  on,  reach  down  to  the 
ground;  the  nails,  like  those  of  a  falcon  or  spar- 
row-hawk, are  pared  to  resemble  talons." 
Bede  records  of  the  abb.ey  of  Coldringham  that 
"the  virgins  who  are  vowed  to  God,  laying 
aside  all  respect  for  their  profession,  whenever 
they  have  leisure  spend  all  their  time  in  weav- 
ing fine  garments  with  which  they  adorn  them- 
selves like  brides."  A  twelfth  century  document 
shows  that  at  that  time  in  Bavaria,  Benedictine 
nuns  went  about  as  freely  as  monks,  and  wore 
no  distinctive  dress. 

The  phenomenon  of  the  "double  monastery" 
formed  in  early  days  a  deviation  from  the  nun- 
nery as  we  think  of  it.  From  the  necessity  of 
having  priests  at  hand  to  minister  spiritually  to 
religious  women,  it  seemed  reasonable  to  make 
houses  for  nuns  side  by  side  with  houses  for 
monks,  among  whom  there  were  always  a  certain 
number  in  orders.  The  problem  that  resulted 
was  one  of  perpetual  difficulty.  How  were  the 
women  to  get  just  what  they  needed  from  the 


86  THE  LADY 

men  and  no  more?  St.  Basil  in  his  double 
monastery  in  Pontus  had  already  been  perplexed 
by  difficult  questions.  May  the  head  of  the 
monastery  (he  asks)  speak  with  any  virgins 
other  than  the  head  of  the  sisters?  When  a 
sister  confesses  to  a  priest  should  the  mother  of 
the  monastery  be  present?  In  Europe  the 
double  monastery  was  very  popular;  "a  chorus 
of  athletes  of  God  and  of  chaste  virgins,"  an 
early  writer  rapturously  calls  it.  Architectural 
remains  show  us  the  various  shifts  different 
communities  were  put  to,  that  unity  and  isola- 
tion might  be  harmonised,  as  in  a  hospital  de- 
voted to  both  diphtheria  and  small-pox.  Often 
there  were  two  churches  in  the  monastery,  one 
for  the  men  and  one  for  the  women ;  but  some- 
times a  common  church  was  split  by  a  wall  just 
high  enough  to  prevent  the  congregation  on 
one  side  from  having  sight  of  the  other.  The 
two  sets  must  not  be  able  to  talk  with  each  other, 
— their  voices  might  mingle  only  in  "recitation, 
song,  groans  or  sighs."  The  two  houses  were 
often  separated  by  a  common  cemetery,  for  in 
death  there  is  neither  male  nor  female.  In 
Spain  it  was  permitted  to  certain  monks  to  kiss 
the  hand  of  certain  nuns  in  greeting,  but  the 
occasions  for  this  observance  are  strictly  regu- 
lated. By  the  rule  of  St.  Fructuosus  it  is  laid 
down  that  if  a  monk  fall  ill  he  must  not  lie  in 


THE  LADY  ABBESS  87 

a  monastery  of  nuns,  lest  his  soul  grow  sick 
while  his  body  grows  well.  Monk  and  nun 
may  not  eat  together.  An  odd  form  of  double 
monastery  was  especially  common  in  Spain  and 
in  England,  where  a  whole  family  would  trans- 
form itself  into  a  religious  house,  father  and 
mother,  children  and  servants,  continuing  to 
live  together  in  their  old  relations  with  the  new 
ones  added.  The  motive  in  most  cases  seems  to 
have  been  pecuniary;  hereditary  possessions 
could  in  this  way  be  safeguarded  by  royal 
charter  and  the  prestige  of  religion.  Some- 
times the  husband  did  not  himself  take  the 
tonsure  but  merely  had  his  wife  made  an 
"abbess." 

In  many  of  the  double  monasteries  an  abbess 
was  at  the  head  of  all,  both  men  and  women. 
It  was  not  unnatural  that  she  should  now  and 
then  try  to  exceed  the  limits  set  by  the  church 
to  the  services  of  women.  Sometimes  she  heard 
confession  and  occasionally  she  excommuni- 
cated. Sometimes  she  was  "weighed  down  with 
anxiety  for  the  account  she  will  have  to  give  at 
the  day  of  judgment  for  her  government  of  a 
cloister  containing  men  and  women  of  various 
ages."  All  the  early  nunneries  in  England  of 
which  we  have  any  evidence  on  the  point  were 
of  this  type,  and  without  exception  the  whole 
establishment  was  ruled  over  by  a  woman.  The 


most  famous  example  is  of  course  Hilda  of 
Whitby,  great  lady,  administrator,  theologian, 
educator  and  saint.  We  know  very  little  of  the 
personal  character  of  these  women;  the  records 
are  confined  for  the  most  parts  to  their  im- 
portant acts  of  policy,  their  correspondence  with 
princes  and  bishops  and  the  miracles  they 
wrought.  Every  mention  of  them  however 
carries  an  intimation  of  the  aristocratic  char- 
acter of  the  profession.  When  the  monk  be- 
came an  object  of  contempt  at  court,  the  nun 
was  still  in  fashion.  Her  social  position  kept 
pace  with  that  of  the  secular  clergy  rather  than 
with  that  of  her  brother  regulars.  Her  schools 
were  for  the  daughters  of  gentlefolk;  to  have 
been  bred  in  a  convent  was  a  mark  of  caste. 

The  coign  of  vantage  from  which  the  nun- 
nery was  able  to  despise  the  world  was  how- 
ever not  merely  that  of  aristocratic  association. 
A  religious  house  was  generally  the  home  of 
order  and  regularity  in  a  world  of  confusion 
and  a  point  of  light  in  a  twilit  age.  If  St. 
Benedict  had  done  nothing  more  than  establish 
the  eight  daily  canonical  hours,  he  would  have 
been  a  benefactor  of  Europe.  The  great  moral 
value  of  regular  hours  is  everywhere  admitted 
to-day  and  is  built  upon  in  the  army,  in  the 
"rest-cure,"  in  ships  at  sea,  as  well  as  in  private 
life.  When  the  prodigal  determines  to  turn 


THE  LADY  ABBESS  89 

over  a  new  leaf  he  is  pretty  sure  to  have  his 
watch  regulated  as  one  of  the  preliminary 
steps.  The  great  superiority  in  social  organ- 
isation among  men  as  compared  with  women 
is  reflected  in  the  fact  that  their  watches  are 
more  apt  to  be  right.  The  monastery  has  from 
the  first  with  a  sure  instinct  of  self-preserva- 
tion clung  to  the  observance  of  the  hours  as  the 
core  of  its  life,  and  the  rest  broken  by  matins, 
lauds  and  prime,  has  been  made  good  by  the 
mental  repose  secured  through  the  twenty-four 
hours  by  accurate  and  minute  division  of  time 
and  frequent  change  of  occupation. 

On  the  productive  side,  the  nun  of  the  cen- 
turies before  the  twelfth  is  popularly  best 
known  by  her  artistic  weaving  and  needlework. 
Scanty  as  are  the  remains  of  her  art  they  bear 
out  to  the  full  the  praise  lavished  upon  it  by 
the  old  writers.  In  early  times  the  blind  walls 
of  the  basilica  offered  space  for  large  hangings; 
when  Gothic  architecture  removed  the  motive 
for  these,  the  nuns  concentrated  upon  vestments 
and  the  furniture  of  the  altar.  The  famous, 
cope  of  Syon,  probably  the  handiwork  of  nuns, 
shows  the  excellence  in  design  as  well  as  in 
execution  of  early  English  work.  Sometimes 
sentiment  would  allow  an  abbess  to  prepare  a 
winding-sheet  for  a  friendly  abbot  during  his 
lifetime.  So  little  do  the  fundamental  ideas  of 


90  THE  LADY 

men  concerning  life  and  death  vary  from  age 
to  age  and  from  land  to  land,  that  Penelope  of 
Ithaca  expressed  her  respect  for  her  husband's 
father  by  the  weaving  of  the  famous  web  that 
was  to  be  his  shroud,  precisely  as  an  abbess  of 
Repton  wrought  a  winding-sheet  for  St. 
Guthlac,  and  an  abbess  of  Whitby  prepared  one 
for  Cuthbert  of  Lindisfarne.  Nor  did  the 
good  ladies  always  confine  their  work  to  pious 
aims.  One  of  the  charges  of  the  rebellious 
Chrodield  against  the  abbess  of  Poitiers  was  that 
she  made  a  robe  for  her  niece  out  of  part  of 
an  altar-cloth.  A  Council  of  the  eighth  cen- 
tury decides  that  "time  shall  be  devoted  more  to 
reading  books  and  to  chanting  psalms  than  to 
weaving  and  decorating  clothes  with  various 
colours  in  unprofitable  richness." 

But  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  the 
life  of  the  cloistered  lady  was  divided  between 
devotion  and  needlework.  As  far  as  the 
records  go  they  show  that  she  was  free  to  try 
her  hand  at  almost  anything.  Many  a  famous 
scribe  developed  in  the  nunnery,  scholar  and 
artist  in  one.  Emo,  abbot  of  a  double  Pre- 
monstrant  house,  not  only  encouraged  his  clerks 
to  write,  acting  as  their  instructor,  "but  taking 
account  of  the  diligence  of  the  female  sex"  he 
set  women  who  were  clever  at  writing  to  the 
assiduous  practice  of  the  art.  Famous  for  cen- 


THE  LADY  ABBESS  91 

turies  were  the  illuminated  transcripfe  of 
Diemund  of  Wessobrunn  and  of  Leukardis  of 
Mallersdorf. 

When  the  Germans  bombarded  Strasburg  in 
1870  they  destroyed  (among  other  things)  the 
manuscript  and  the  only  complete  copy  of  the 
Garden  of  Delights,  the  magnum  opus  of 
Herrad,  abbess  of  Hohenburg.  Fortunately 
transcripts  or  copies  of  parts  of  it  survive  and 
have  been  piously  collected,  giving  us  a  very 
vivid  little  picture  of  social  life  in  the  twelfth 
century.  Herrad's  nuns,  according  to  her 
own  pictures  of  them,  wore  clothes  differing 
but  little  from  those  of  world's  women.  The 
only  uniform  article  of  dress  was  a  white 
turban,  over  which  the  veil  was  thrown,  but  the 
veil  itself  might  be  red  or  purple  while  the 
dress  was  also  various  in  colour  and  apparently 
subject  to  the  wearer's  taste.  Herrad's  great 
work  was  written  for  the  instruction  of  her  nuns, 
and  covers  the  history  of  the  world,  based  on  the 
Bible  narrative.  She  digresses  frequently  into 
questions  of  philosophy,  ethics  and  profane 
learning.  In  discussing  the  decay  of  faith  in 
connection  with  the  Tower  of  Babel,  she  in- 
troduces a  very  respectful  graphic  presentation 
of  the  Seven  Liberal  Arts.  Personified  as 
women  in  twelfth  century  dress  they  are  ranged 
around  Philosophy,  Socrates  and  Plato,  and 


92  THE  LADY 

there  is  nothing  to  warn  the  nuns  against  their 
charms  unless  it  be  the  head  of  a  howling  dog 
carried  by  Dialectic. 

The  interest  taken  in  the  nunnery  in  natural 
science  may  be  seen  by  reference  to  the  en- 
cyclopaedic Physics  of  Hildegard,  abbess  of 
Rupertsberg,  a  complete  materia  medica  of 
the  middle  age.  Hildegard  describes  a 
large  number  of  plants,  animals  and  chem- 
ical substances,  closing  each  description 
with  a  statement  of  the  object's  therapeutic 
qualities.  We  cannot  say  that  her  conclusions 
are  always  based  on  direct  observation,  for  she 
has  as  much  to  say  about  the  unicorn  as  about 
the  pig.  But  she  holds  the  sound  conviction 
that  "devils"  can  be  eliminated  from  the  system 
by  water-drinking,  and  displays  in  general  so 
much  common-sense  that  it  is  clear  her  reputa- 
tion for  wonderful  cures  rested  on  a  basis  of 
scientific  treatment.  The  care  of  the  sick  was 
always  one  of  the  duties  of  a  religious  house, 
where  a  light  diet,  regular  hours  and  a  gen- 
erally pure  water  supply  furnished  better 
sanitary  conditions  than  were  always  attainable 
in  the  world.  Books  such  as  those  of  Herrad 
and  Hildegard  presuppose  a  tradition  of 
scientific  interest,  and  the  co-operation  of  in- 
telligent pupils  as  well  as  the  stimulus  of  an 
appreciative  public.  A  good  deal  of  the  work 


KiUtikU  afctu 


Rilindis,  Abbess  of  Hohenbjurg. 
From  a  drawing  by  llerrad,  Abbess  of  Hohevburg.     Twelfth  century. 


THE  LADY  ABBESS  93 

in  each  was  probably  done,  as  we  should  say 
to-day,  in  the  seminar,  and  it  is  fair  to  infer 
from  them  a  widespread  intellectual  interest 
and  freedom  among  the  pupils  in  the  cloister. 

Gerberg,  abbess  of  Gandersheim  and 
daughter  of  Duke  Lindolf,  the  progenitor  of 
the  royal  house  of  Saxony,  was  an  excellent 
scholar  and  encouraged  among  her  nuns  the 
studies  she  had  herself  followed  under  the 
guidance  of  learned  men.  In  the  scholarly 
atmosphere  of  her  abbey  in  the  tenth  century 
the  nun  Hrotsvith  produced  the  works  which 
make  her  name  memorable  not  only  among 
women  but  in  the  general  history  of  literature. 
Her  metrical  legends  and  history  of  her  own 
time  have  merits  of  their  own,  but  they  can  be 
paralleled  among  the  writings  of  other  authors 
of  the  period.  Her  unique  value  is  as  a  writer 
of  Latin  drama.  From  the  close  of  classic 
times  to  the  crude  beginnings  of  the  miracle 
play,  we  know  of  no  dramatic  composition  in 
Europe  save  the  seven  plays  of  Hrotsvitho  The 
first  of  the  humanists,  she  has  left  us  a  full  ac- 
count of  her  admiration  for  classical  literature 
and  her  determination  to  make  its  glories  serv- 
iceable to  the  pure  in  heart.  After  praising 
enthusiastically  the  work  of  Terence  she  says: 
"I  have  not  hesitated  to  take  this  poet's  style  as 
a  model,  and  while  others  honour  him  by 


94  THE  LADY 

perusing  his  dramas,  I  have  attempted  in  the 
very  way  in  which  he  treats  of  unchaste  love 
among  evil  women,  to  celebrate  according  to 
my  ability  the  praiseworthy  chasteness  of  god- 
like maidens.  In  doing  so,  I  have  often  hesi- 
tated with  a  blush  on  my  cheeks,  because  the 
nature  of  the  work  obliged  me  to  concentrate 
my  attention  on  the  wicked  passion  of  illicit 
love  and  on  the  tempting  talk  of  the  amorous, 
against  which  we  at  other  times  close  our  ears."* 
Blush  or  no  blush,  this  cloistered  lady  suc- 
ceeded, like  the  chaste  Richardson  eight  hun- 
dred years  later,  in  causing  virtue  to  undergo 
adventures  of  the  interesting  character  that 
Terence  and  Fielding  supposed  to  be  reserved 
for  vice.  She  anticipates  Anatole  France  in 
treating  the  redemption  of  Thais  by  Paphnutius; 
Christian  maidens  repulse  pagan  lovers; 
the  tragedy  of  martyrdom  and  the  most 
realistic  comedy  relieve  each  other.  Three 
virgins  persecuted  by  Diocletian  attract  the  eye 
of  their  gaoler;  with  the  prospect  of  speedy 
death  before  them  they  laugh  with  all  their 
hearts  at  the  spell  put  upon  him  whereby  he 
mistakes  the  kitchen  for  their  chamber  and 
fondles  in  his  madness  the  pots  and  pans.  Very 
thoroughly  and  with  the  wide  sweep  that  we 
are  wont  to  call  virile  did  this  lady  deal  with 

*  Translated  by  Miss  Eckenstein. 


THE  LADY  ABBESS  95 

life  and  letters.  Not  her  cloister,  but  the  polite 
world  of  her  time,  was  her  public.  As  evidence 
of  her  continued  prestige  it  is  interesting  to 
note  that  four  hundred  years  after  her  death  the 
Rhenish  Celtic  Society  printed  an  edition  of 
her  dramas  and  secured  copyright  by  taking  out 
what  is  believed  to  be  the  first  "privilege"  issued 
by  the  Imperial  Council. 

II 

THE  many  influences  that  worked  together 
to  change  men's  view  of  life  during  the 
later  middle  ages  were  all  reflected  in  the 
career  of  the  lady-abbess.  Feudalism  had  seen 
her  become  a  baron,  strong  individually  and 
with  the  strength  of  her  class.  At  times  when 
intellectual  interests  prevailed,  her  leisure  and 
resources  had  enabled  her  to  take  a  manful  part 
in  the  literary  production  and  in  the  queer 
scientific  investigation  of  her  age.  Her 
artistic  achievements  were,  within  their  range, 
of  a  high  order.  But  in  her  breast  as  well  as 
in  the  hard  old  social  framework  that  supported 
her,  solvents  were  at  work.  Considering  under 
three  of  its  aspects  a  force  which  had  many 
more,  we  may  say  roughly  that  these  solvents 
were  in  religion  the  rediscovery  of  Christianity 
which  resulted  in  the  foundation  of  the  men- 


96  THE  LADY 

dicant  orders,  in  social  philosophy  the  recogni- 
tion of  the  submerged,  and  in  literature 
mysticism  and  romance.  All  these  ideas  which 
were  destined  to  give  a  wonderful  new  value  to 
life  were  welcomed  and  furthered  by  the  lady- 
abbess,  who  could  not  foresee  that  her  decadence 
was  to  be  one  of  their  by-products. 

The  profane  love  against  which  Herrad's 
virgins  and  martyrs  fought  was  of  the  simple 
old  pagan  type.  No  emotional  element  was 
present  in  the  heroine's  breast  to  bring  these 
dramas  over  into  the  class  of  the  problem  play. 
But  a  very  different  conception  of  the  love  of 
men  and  women,  one  of  the  most  profound  psy- 
chological changes  of  the  middle  age,  had  be- 
come the  motive  of  a  graceful  literature.  When 
every  lady  in  the  world  had  her  love  song  it 
must  not  be  supposed  that  the  abbess  would  be 
without  one.  The  mysticism  of  chivalry  used 
the  same  vocabulary  as  the  mysticism  of  reli- 
gion. The  knight's  service  to  his  lady,  long, 
patient  and  (theoretically)  not  too  clamorous 
for  reward  was  a  type  of  the  impassioned  serv- 
ice of  monk  or  nun.  A  "maid  of  Christ"  asked 
Thomas  de  Hales  to  write  her  a  song  and  re- 
ceived the  "Love  Rune,"  which  with  its  lively 
lilt  and  gentle  gaiety  remains  one  of  the  glories 
of  Middle  English  literature.  Its  drift  can  be 


THE  LADY  ABBESS  97 

gathered  from  an  artless  translation  of  two  or 
three  stanzas: 

"The  love  of  man  lasts  but  an  hour, 

Now  he  loveth,  now  is  he  sad. 
Now  will  he  smile,  now  will  he  glow'r ; 

Now  is  he  wroth,  now  is  he  glad. 
His  love  is  here,  and  now  'tis  yonder; 

He  loves  till  he  hath  had  his  will. 
To  trust  him  does  not  make  him  fonder; 

Who  trusts  him  is  a  zany  still. 

"Where  are  Paris  and  Heleyne 

That  were  so  fair  and  bright  of  bloom? 
Vanished  are  those  lovers  twain 

With  Dido  out  into  the  gloom. 
Hector  of  the  strong  right  hand 

And  Caesar,  lord  of  words  enow, 
Have  perished  from  out  the  land 

As  speeds  the  arrow  from  the  bow." 

But  the  lord  Christ  is  introduced  as  the  most 
desirable  of  lovers: 

"Here  is  the  richest  man  in  land, 

As  wide  as  men  speak  with  the  mouth. 

All  are  vassals  of  his  hand, 

East  and  west  and  north  and  south. 


98  THE  LADY 

Henry  king  of  all  England 

Holds  of  him  and  bends  the  knee. 

Maiden,  this  lord  sends  command 
He  would  fain  be  known  to  thee." 

The  Ancren  Riivle  or  Rule  for  Recluses 
describes  in  courtly  allegory  the  wooing  of 
a  maiden  by  the  Lord  of  Heaven:  "There 
was  a  lady  besieged  by  her  foes  within 
an  earthly  castle,  and  her  land  was  all  de- 
stroyed and  herself  quite  poor.  The  love  of 
a  powerful  king  was  however  fixed  upon 
her  with  such  boundless  affection  that  to 
solicit  her  love  he  sent  his  messengers 
one  after  the  other,  and  often  many  together, 
and  sent  her  trinkets  both  many  and  fair,  and 
supplies  of  victuals  and  help  of  his  high 
retinue  to  hold  her  castle.  She  received  them 
all  as  a  careless  creature  with  so  hard  a  heart 
that  he  could  never  get  nearer  to  her  love. 
What  would'st  thou  more?  He  came  himself 
at  last  and  showed  her  his  fair  face,  since  he 
was  of  all  men  the  fairest  to  behold,  and  spoke 
so  sweetly  and  with  such  gentle  words  that  they 
might  have  raised  the  dead  from  death  to  life. 
And  he  wrought  many  wonders  and  did  many 
wondrous  deeds  before  her  eyes,  and  showed  her 
his  power  and  told  her  of  his  kingdom,  and 
offered  to  make  her  queen  of  all  that  he  owned. 


THE  LADY  ABBESS  99 

But  all  availed  him  naught.  Was  not  this 
surprising  mockery?  For  she  was  not  worthy 
to  have  been  his  servant.  But  owing  to  his 
goodness  love  so  mastered  him  that  he  said  at 
last:  'Lady,  thou  art  attacked,  and  thy  enemies 
are  so  strong  that  thou  canst  not  without  my 
help  escape  their  hands  that  thou  mayest  not 
be  put  to  a  shameful  death.  I  am  prompted  by 
love  of  thee  to  undertake  this  fight,  and  rid 
thee  of  those  that  seek  thy  death.  I  know  well 
that  I  shall  receive  a  mortal  wound,  but  I  will 
do  it  gladly  to  win  thy  heart.  Now  I  beseech 
thee  for  the  love  I  bear  thee  that  thou  love  me 
at  least  after  my  death,  since  thou  would'st 
not  in  my  lifetime.'  Thus  did  the  king.  He 
freed  her  of  her  enemies  and  was  himself 
wounded  and  slain  in  the  end.  Through  a  mir- 
acle he  arose  from  death  to  life.  Would  not 
that  same  lady  be  of  an  evil  kind  if  she  did  not 
love  him  above  all  things  after  this?"  * 

The  literary  nuns  of  the  Abbey  of  Helfta  were 
themselves  minnesingers.  Spiritual  love  in  all 
its  aspects  was  their  theme.  Ecstacy  expressed 
itself  in  strains  as  strongly  figurative  as  the  Song 
of  Solomon.  Transforming  love  made  the 
cloister-life  to  glow.  Visions  became  common 
among  inspired  nuns.  Purity  itself  was  impas- 
sioned. By  the  laws  of  chivalry  the  knight's 

*  Translated  by  Miss  Eckenstein. 


ioo  THE  LADY 

love  for  his  lady  was  expressed  in  courtesy  and 
kindness  toward  all  the  world.  In  the  cloister 
also  devotion  to  the  great  lover  expressed  itself 
in  tenderness  for  men. 

The  great  monastic  expansion  of  the  twelfth 
century  took  a  long  step  toward  democracy  in 
the  cloister.  The  problem  of  the  unattached 
woman  of  the  lower  class  had  become  a  menace 
to  society.  The  great  orders  of  Fontevraud 
and  Premontre  as  well  as  many  less  famous  were 
organised  in  the  interest  of  the  helpless  of  all 
classes  and  particularly  of  the  lost  woman. 
Of  Fontevraud  we  are  told  that  "the  poor  were 
received,  the  feeble  were  not  refused,  nor 
women  of  evil  life,  nor  sinners,  neither  lepers 
nor  the  helpless."  Thousands  of  women  en- 
tered these  orders.  From  a  bull  of  1344  it  is 
to  be  inferred  that  there  were  at  that  time  about 
four  hundred  settlements  of  Premonstrant  nuns. 
All  the  women  in  these  settlements  were  pro- 
fessed, and  their  lives  were  spent  in  constant 
labour,  which  ultimately  brought  worldly  as 
well  as  moral  profit.  These  orders  spread 
rapidly  and  widely.  They  were  in  harmony 
with  the  general  tendency  of  the  age,  both 
ideally  and  practically;  for  while  they  gave 
ease  to  the  rising  social  conscience  of  the  upper 
classes,  they  also  helped  the  growth  of  skilled 
labour  and  trade  organisation  among  the  lower. 


THE  LADY  ABBESS  101 

We  can  best  realise  the  contrast  between  the 
old  nunnery  and  the  new  by  noting  two  specific 
cases  in  England.  In  the  middle  of  the  twelfth 
century  Mary  of  Blois,  daughter  of  King 
Stephen,  was  abbess  of  the  ancient  foundation 
of  Romsey,  associated  with  many  other  royal 
and  noble  ladies.  Upon  the  death  of  her 
brother  William  she  became  heiress  of  the 
County  of  Boulogne.  Henry  II  thereupon 
overrode  her  vows,  brought  her  from  the  cloister 
and  married  her  to  Matthew,  son  of  the  count 
of  Flanders,  who  thus  became  count  of 
Boulogne.  Mary's  sister  Matilda  had  a  some- 
what similar  experience,  and  her  convent  breed- 
ing left  her  with  a  taste  for  letters  and  the 
ability  to  correspond  in  Latin  with  learned  men. 
At  the  very  time  that  these  great  ladies  were 
exemplifying  in  Wessex  the  solidarity  of  in- 
terest between  court  and  cloister,  Gilbert  of 
Sempringham  was  creating  from  humble  be- 
ginnings his  great  settlements  for  the  higher  life 
and  his  dwellings  for  the  poor  and  the  infirm, 
for  lepers  and  for  orphans.  Gilbert  was  the 
son  of  a  Norman  baron  by  an  English  woman 
of  low  degree.  He  was  educated  in  France  and 
studied  the  great  orders  of  the  continent,  with 
the  result  that  when  his  growing  foundation 
came  to  need  a  rule  he  gave  it  one  of  wide 
eclecticism  to  meet  the  needs  of  canons  and  nuns, 


102  THE  LADY 

laybrothers  and  laysisters.  The  simple  life  was 
to  be  lived  at  Sempringham,  and  to  this  art  and 
letters  seemed  to  be  inimical.  The  rule  de- 
clared pictures  and  sculpture  superfluous,  and 
forbade  the  use  of  the  Latin  tongue  unless 
under  special  circumstances.  A  prior  ruled  the 
men,  three  prioresses  the  women  who  were  twice 
as  numerous.  The  women  performed  the 
domestic  work  for  the  whole  body,  handing  the 
men's  meals  through  a  hole  in  the  wall  with  a 
turntable. 

But  the  humanitarianism  that  inspired  Gil- 
bert reached  Matilda  too,  in  spite  of  her  clas- 
sical education.  A  famous  anecdote  describes 
her  girt  with  a  towel  and  washing  the  feet  of 
lepers.  Her  hospital  of  St.  Giles  in  the  East 
was  for  long  the  most  important  institution  of 
its  kind  in  England.  "Leprosy"  was  in  the 
middle  ages  a  summary  term  for  many  forms  of 
disfiguring  skin  disease.  Fear  of  contagion 
was  a  comparatively  late  motive  for  its  isola- 
tion, which  originated  in  its  loathsomeness  to 
the  eye.  The  care  of  the  leper  became  a  typical 
good  work.  His  miserable  lot  as  an  outcast 
constituted  a  special  appeal  to  the  new  tender- 
ness of  heart,  while  his  repulsiveness  made  his 
tendance  an  instrument  for  the  new  effort  to  be 
like  Christ.  Great  ladies  everywhere,  gen- 
erally convent-bred,  renounced  place  and  pleas- 


THE  LADY  ABBESS  103 

ure  to  serve  the  sick  and  the  poor.  Virchow  re- 
marks that  the  great  family  of  the  Counts  of 
Andechs  and  Meran,  famous  for  its  philan- 
thropy, practically  extinguished  itself  by  devo- 
tion. Its  men  joined  the  crusades  or  the  church, 
its  women  entered  the  cloister,  and  after  a  few 
generations  this  powerful  and  widespread 
family  perished  of  its  virtues. 

The  mendicant  orders,  which  realised  what 
Plato  had  maintained,  that  he  who  is  to  serve 
society  must  have  nothing  of  his  own,  held  up 
an  ideal  absolutely  at  variance  with  the  vested 
interests  which  the  abbess  had  so  ably  ad- 
ministered. Side  by  side  with  the  feudal 
strongholds  of  the  church,  the  Poor  Clares 
built  their  huts,  bearing  towards  them  somewhat 
the  relation  that  the  Salvation  Army  bears  to  a 
charitable  millionaire.  The  Poor  Clares  had 
no  time  for  culture  and  the  arts.  Love  for  God 
and  man  and  the  passion  for  service  carried  into 
the  vow  of  poverty  thousands  of  women  from 
every  class.  Asceticism  and  silence  were  op- 
posed as  methods  to  comfort  and  scholarship. 
The  ultimate  deterioration  of  the  mendicants 
did  not  come  until  they  had  induced  the  general 
change  of  ideas  that  was  to  be  responsible  for 
the  Protestant  Reformation. 

The  decay  of  the  aristocratic  monastery  was 
doubtless  a  step  in  advance  in  the  history  of 


104  THE  LADY 

men,  but  it  was  a  calamity  for  the  lady,  who 
was  reduced  to  the  old  dilemma  of  the  home  or 
outlawry.  Luther  had  a  thoroughly  Mo- 
hammedan notion  of  woman's  status, — only  as  a 
wife  and  mother  had  she  a  right  to  exist.  Her 
education  became  a  matter  of  no  importance 
and  virtually  ceased.  Even  Fuller,  the  worthy 
seventeenth  century  divine,  who  cannot  be  ac- 
cused of  a  bias  in  favour  of  convents,  said: 
"They  were  good  she  schools  wherein  the  girls 
and  maids  of  the  neighbourhood  were  taught 
to  read  and  work;  and  sometimes  a  little  Latin 
was  taught  them  therein.  Yea,  give  me  leave 
to  say,  if  such  feminine  foundations  had  still 
continued,  provided  no  vow  were  obtruded  upon 
them,  (virginity  is  least  kept  where  it  is  most 
constrained,)  haply  the  weaker  sex,  besides  the 
avoiding  modern  inconveniences,  might  be 
heightened  to  a  higher  perfection  than  hitherto 
hath  been  attained." 

Without  accepting  Fuller's  epigram  we  may 
admit  that  the  ideal  of  virginity  was  not  always 
attained  in  the  cloister;  neither  is  justice  al- 
ways attained  on  the  bench  nor  valour  in  the 
army.  Many  a  prioress  besides  Chaucer's  may 
have  had  for  her  motto  "Amor  vincit  omnia." 
But  the  very  persistence  of  the  system  would 
be  strong  evidence,  if  we  had  no  other,  that  on 
the  whole  the  cloister  had  the  esteem  of  its  con- 


THE  LADY  ABBESS  105 

temporaries,  and  that  the  women  who  gave  it 
tone  were  in  general  true  to  their  calling,  and 
made  whole-heartedly  the  sacrifice  in  return  for 
which  they  received  freedom. 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE 


"Nul,  s'il  n'est  cortois  et  sages, 
Ne  puet  riens  d'amors  aprendre." — 

CHRETIEN  DE  TROVES. 

THE  lady's  life,  and  even  her  character, 
are  always  sensibly  modified  by  the 
house  she  lives  in,  and  the  house  rep- 
resents the  social  or  economic  requirements  of 
the  man  of  her  class.  The  man  shapes  the  house 
and  the  house  shapes  the  lady.  The  Roman 
villa,  ample,  luxurious  and  open,  built  to  house 
a  complicated  social  life,  began  to  disappear  in 
Europe  together  with  the  pax  Romana,  and  the 
restriction  of  space  set  in  that  necessarily  ac- 
companies fortification.  The  Roman  castella, 
originally  established  only  on  the  frontier, 
sprang  up  everywhere;  in  the  fourth  century 
France  bristled  with  them.  When  the  bar- 
barians were  finally  in  control,  it  was  they  in 
turn  who  fortified  strong  natural  points,  often 
selecting  the  very  sites  on  which  the  Romans 
had  built  and  retaining  the  Roman  plan — an 
artificial  mound  of  earth  surrounded  by  a  pali- 

106 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE    107 

sade  and  a  ditch,  and  surmounted  by  a  tower. 
In  forming  a  picture  of  the  medieval  castle  we 
must  banish  the  vision  of  the  coquettish  chateau 
of  the  Renaissance,  the  fortified  manor  like 
Azay-le-Rideau,  and  the  fortified  palace  like 
Chambord.  Many  a  good  knight  in  the  twelfth 
century  housed  his  family,  his  servants  and  his 
men-at-arms  under  the  single  roof  of  his  donjon. 
All  castles  agreed  in  certain  features.  They 
were  surrounded  by  a  strong  wall,  punctuated 
by  towers  and  by  a  great  gate  flanked  with 
towers  and  equipped  with  drawbridge  and  port- 
cullis. The  gate  gave  access  to  the  lower  court. 
The  inner  court  was  in  its  turn  enclosed  by  a  for- 
tified wall ;  in  the  inner  court  stood  the  heart  of 
the  castle,  the  donjon;  and  within  the  donjon 
dwelt  the  lady. 

Windows  and  doors  were  eschewed  in  castle 
architecture.  The  ground  floor  of  the  donjon 
had  no  opening  of  any  kind,  the  entrance  being 
invariably  on  the  first  floor  and  reached  by  a 
gently  inclined  bridge,  which  was  removed  or 
destroyed  in  case  of  siege.  The  whole  of  the 
first  floor  was  occupied  by  a  single  room,  the 
famous  "hall"  of  ballad  and  history.  This 
room  was  round,  square  or  polygonal,  according 
to  the  shape  of  the  tower.  It  was  lighted 
grudgingly  by  a  narrow  window  here  and  there, 
set  at  the  end  of  a  sort  of  tunnel  bored  through 


io8  THE  LADY 

a  wall  eight  or  ten  feet  thick,  and  it  was  warmed 
by  open  fires  of  logs.  In  the  English  manor 
there  prevailed  until  the  sixteenth,  and  even  the 
seventeenth,  century  the  Homeric  custom  of  the 
central  hearth  without  a  chimney.  The  smoke 
made  its  more  or  less  leisurely  way  out  of  a  hole 
in  the  roof  directly  over  the  hearth.  But  in 
France  the  Roman  chimney,  never  altogether 
abandoned,  was  in  common  use  from  the  elev- 
enth century  onward,  and  developed  early  its 
characteristic  conical  hood.  The  hall  was  often 
paved  with  tiles  of  white  stone  encrusted  with 
black  mastic,  and  on  this  flooring  were  spread 
thick  rugs.  If  the  company  sat  freely  on  the 
floor  it  was  not  because  there  were  no  chairs, 
though  they  were  not  as  numerous  as  in  the  Ho- 
meric house.  But  a  row  of  coffers  often  stood 
against  the  walls,  and  sometimes  also  there  were 
massive  forms  with  backs,  divided  like  choir 
stalls ;  and  sometimes  there  were  lighter  benches, 
easily  moved  about.  Kings  and  great  lords  had 
fald-stools,  like  the  one  in  which  the  abbess  Her- 
rad's  picture  shows  Herod  seated,  but  it  was  not 
every  simple  castellan  who  owned  one.  The  as- 
perities of  all  these  somewhat  unconciliating 
seats  were  tempered  by  rugs  and  cushions,  but  a 
study  of  them  explains  why  persons  of  the  ro- 
mances so  frequently  sat  upon  the  bed.  In  the 
first  place,  the  bed  of  the  lord  and  the  lady  stood 


The  Donjon  of    Proving. 
From  a  drawing,  reproduced  in  Gautier's  La  Chevalerie. 


as  often  as  not  in  the  hall,  opposite  the  fireplace. 
It  was  large  and  monumental;  the  frame  was 
gilded,  carved,  inlaid  with  ivory.  Cords 
stretched  on  the  frame  held  a  feather  bed,  which 
was  covered  with  sheets  of  linen  or  silk.  Dur- 
ing the  day  the  bed  was  shrouded  with  a  rich 
spread  of  fur,  or  silk,  or  cloth  of  gold.  It  was 
surrounded  by  curtains,  which  made  it  a  room 
within  a  room.  Herrad  shows  us  Solomon 
sleeping  in  all  the  glory  of  the  twelfth  century, 
with  a  night-light  and  as  easy  a  posture  as  can 
be  assumed  by  a  sleeper  who  wears  a  crown. 

With  all  its  splendour,  the  presence  of  the  bed 
in  the  hall  is  symbolic  of  the  change  wrought 
in  manners  by  lack  of  space.  Privacy  was  gone. 
From  Homer's  time  the  spacious  Greek  house, 
copied  by  the  Romans,  had  contained  a  number 
of  small  bedrooms,  so  that  everyone  might  have 
his  own.  The  chateau  changed  all  that.  The 
lord  and  the  lady  slept  in  the  hall.  On  the  floor 
above  lay  their  children  and  their  guests,  often 
enough  in  but  two  rooms,  the  women  in  one  and 
the  men  in  the  other.  At  the  head  of  each  bed 
was  a  bar  on  which  the  occupant  hung  his 
clothes.  In  the  morning  he  could  reach  them 
from  where  he  lay  and  dress  himself  behind  his 
curtains  before  getting  out  of  bed.  Outside  his 
curtains  was  the  public.  It  is  often  lamented 
by  critics  of  mediaeval  morals  that  young  men 


i  io  THE  LADY 

had,  apparently,  free  access  to  the  bedrooms  of 
young  women  and  that  they  so  often  sat  down 
to  talk  upon  a  lit  pare.  It  must  be  remembered 
in  this  connection  that  the  mediaeval  bedroom 
offered  hardly  more  privacy  than  the  American 
sleeping-car. 

On  the  third  floor  slept  the  servants  and  men- 
at-arms.  On  the  ground  floor  were  store-rooms 
and  offices.  The  kitchen  was  generally  a  sep- 
arate building.  In  the  basement  was  the  bath- 
room, primitive  in  appointments,  but  a  neces- 
sary of  life.  If  the  baron  and  his  wife  dressed 
before  getting  out  of  bed,  and  contented  them- 
selves with  washing  face  and  hands  before  fac- 
ing the  world,  they  were  nevertheless  systematic 
bathers.  On  the  one  hand  there  are  the  ro- 
mances, which  speak  of  bathing  almost  as  often 
as  Homer  does.  The  guest  is  welcomed  with  a 
bath;  the  weary  man  and  the  invalid  are  re- 
freshed by  it.  The  ceremonial  bath  of  bride 
and  bridegroom  before  marriage,  and  of  the 
knight  before  taking  arms,  are  but  the  symbolic 
use  of  a  common  custom.  And,  on  the  other 
hand,  there  are  the  remains  in  many  an  ancient 
tower  of  the  room  devoted  to  the  bath  and  of  the 
pipes  that  served  it.  However  rude  the  mech- 
anism, refinement  was  there.  Often  the  bath 
was  perfumed  or  medicated  with  herbs.  "Give 
me  a  bath  that  has  run  twice,"  asks  a  fastidious 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE    in 

knight.  As  in  Homer,  the  care  of  the  bath  and 
its  preparation  for  even  men  guests  was  the  work 
of  the  daughters  of  a  hospitable  house. 

Apart  from  the  question  of  the  bath,  everyone 
— the  lord  and  his  lady,  their  children  and  their 
guests — washed  hands  several  times  a  day.  Be- 
fore and  after  dinner  it  was  an  inevitable  cere- 
mony. In  early  days,  apparently,  it  took  place 
at  fixed  stands,  where  water  ran  from  taps. 
Later,  as  in  Homer,  water  was  poured  for  guests 
as  they  sat  at  table.  This  ablution  was  very 
necessary,  for  the  lady  of  the  castle,  like  Homer's 
lady,  had  no  fork.  In  short,  the  classical 
fondness  for  water,  derived  from  the  Greeks 
through  the  Romans,  prevailed  in  the  Middle 
Age.  There  were  public  baths  in  large  towns, 
and  there  were  bathing  resorts.  Only  by  de- 
grees did  cleanliness  fade  out  of  Europe,  and 
dirt  did  not  triumph  until  the  Renaissance.  In 
1292  the  role  de  la  taille  mentions  twenty-six 
baths  in  Paris;  under  Louis  the  Fourteenth 
there  were  but  two. 

The  walls  and  ceiling  of  the  castellan's  hall 
were  not  so  richly  decorated  as  those  of  the  hall 
of  Menelaus.  Instead  of  plates  of  metal  and  of 
coloured  glass  the  Middle  Age  used  paint. 
Peinte  a  flors  is  the  common  epithet.  The  per- 
sistent tradition  of  the  Roman  villa  showed  it- 
self in  degenerate  classical  motives — grotesque 


112  THE  LADY 

acanthuses  and  distorted  foliage.  Sometimes 
the  artist  ventured  on  human  figures,  drawing 
them  in  silhouette  against  a  (generally)  light 
background.  The  whole  decorative  effect  was 
cheerful.  On  feast-days  the  walls  were  hung 
with  embroidered  stuffs:  not  until  the  thirteenth 
century  with  tapestry  properly  so  called. 

If  the  lady's  house,  in  order  to  keep  her  safe, 
was  obliged  to  contract  the  space  at  her  disposal, 
she  found  expansion  and  light  and  air  in  the 
garden.  Without  the  wall,  at  the  foot  of  the 
castle  hill,  approached  often  by  a  postern  of  its 
own,  lay  her  open-air  drawing-room.  The 
garden  of  the  Middle  Age  was  strictly  architec- 
tural. Its  symmetical  plan,  with  orderly  sub- 
divisions, the  presence  of  seats  of  stone  or  turf, 
sculptured  fountains  and  plants  in  tubs,  gave  it 
the  air  of  a  house  without  a  roof.  It  was 
planted  with  regard  to  the  bird's-eye  view  from 
above,  and  as  seen  from  the  castle  must  have 
looked  like  a  carpet  or  a  tiled  pavement.  The 
labyrinth  and  other  familiar  motives  of  floor 
decoration  are  found  in  garden  plans.  An  im- 
portant feature  is  always  the  fountain.  Even 
in  Paradise,  as  figured  in  Jean  de  Bern's  Book 
of  Hours,  a  beautiful  Gothic  fountain  refreshed 
our  first  parents.  Trees  were  clipped  to  shape, 
artificial  mounds  were  raised,  stiff  hedges  di- 
vided one  room,  so  to  speak,  from  another. 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE    113 

Before  the  end  of  the  Middle  Age  gardening 
had  become  a  curious  art,  almost  Japanese. 
Wonders  of  grafting,  dwarfing  and  forcing  were 
accomplished.  The  first  hot-house  appeared 
early  in  the  thirteenth  century.  Fruit  trees  were 
used  freely  in  the  garden;  Charles  the  Fifth 
planted  a  thousand  cherry-trees  in  an  architec- 
tural setting  at  St.  Pol.  The  most  usual  flowers 
were  roses  of  various  colours,  lilies  and  other 
bulbs,  common  violets  and  a  sort  that  needed 
to  be  taken  indoors  in  winter,  stocks,  pinks,  lav- 
ender, pansies  and  columbine.  Many  gardens 
had  ponds  stocked  with  edible  or  curious  fish. 
In  some,  native  and  foreign  birds  were  kept. 
Often  a  park  was  added,  in  which  dwelt  wild 
and  tame  animals.  The  modern  zoological  gar- 
den is  the  direct  descendant  of  the  garden  of  the 
castle.  In  this  charming  setting  many  and  many 
a  scene  of  the  romances  is  enacted.  The  frown- 
ing donjon  by  itself  would  leave  the  feudal  lady 
only  half  explained;  it  is  in  the  garden  that  we 
must  look  for  the  expansion  of  some  of  her  most 
characteristic  traits. 

The  lady's  own  outward  appearance  is  almost 
as  well  known  to  us  as  that  of  her  house  and 
garden.  It  is  not  necessary  to  believe  that  she 
was  as  uniformly  blond  as  the  romances  assert; 
they  prove  only  that  the  favourite  type  was  grey- 
eyed,  fair-haired,  white-skinned,  with  rosy 


H4  THE  LADY 

cheeks  and  scarlet  lips.  Whatever  her  complex- 
ion, the  lady's  costume  consisted  of  three  main 
items.  Next  her  body  she  wore  a  chemise  of 
fine  linen,  "white  as  a  meadow-flower."  This 
garment  had  sleeves,  and  covered  the  wearer 
from  chin  to  foot.  Sometimes  the  collar  and 
cuffs  were  embroidered  with  gold,  and  were  al- 
lowed to  show.  Over  the  chemise  she  put  on 
the  pelisson,  a  garment  made  of  fur,  but  covered 
within  with  linen  and  without  with  silk.  The 
pelisson  was  indispensable  in  winter,  indoors  as 
well  as  out;  but  in  summer  it  would  be  excessive, 
and  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  the  fur  sub- 
strate was  then  withdrawn,  leaving  the  border 
as  before.  Over  the  pelisson  the  lady  wore  the 
famous  bliaut,  the  dress  of  half  the  saints  in 
Christendom  as  we  see  them  in  sculpture  or  in 
stained  glass.  The  bliaut  was  sometimes 
straight  and  simple,  giving  the  wearer  the  same 
apparent  diameter  at  shoulder,  waist  and  knee. 
Sometimes  it  was  confined  by  a  broad  cuirass 
that  outlined  the  breast  and  hips.  For  material 
she  might  choose  among  a  variety  of  woollen 
stuffs  or  among  silks  of  great  beauty,  ranging  in 
weight  from  samite  to  crepe  de  Chine.  In  pur- 
ple and  scarlet,  green  and  blue,  the  lady  dressed, 
with  often  a  thread  of  gold  interwoven,  and  with 
fringes  and  braids  of  gold  in  plenty.  The 
climax  of  her  costume  was  the  girdle,  fastened 


I.  2- 

i.  The  simple  Bliant. 

From  a  twelfth  century  MS.     Reproduced  in  Gautier's  La  Chcvalerie. 

2.  The  Bliant  with  girdle. 
From  a  statue  in  Chartres  Cathedral,  reproduced  in  Gautier's  La  Cheralerie. 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE    115 

loosely  about  the  waist  and  falling  to  the  bottom 
of  the  bliaut.  Gold  and  jewels  often  went  to 
make  it;  their  brilliancy  accented  the  lines  of 
the  lady's  body  and  called  attention  to  every 
movement  as  she  walked.  Her  hair  was  woven 
with  ribbons  into  two  long  braids,  which  she 
pulled  forward  and  allowed  to  hang  in  front. 
Out  of  doors  she  wore  a  mantle  which  might 
open  either  in  front  or  at  the  side,  and  was  cap- 
able of  highly  effective  draping.  It  could  be  ar- 
ranged to  show  as  much  or  as  little  as  the  wearer 
desired  of  the  costume  beneath.  Both  sexes  cov- 
ered the  head  out  of  doors  with  the  chaperon,  a 
sort  of  peaked  hood  with  a  cape.  And  both 
sexes  wore  pointed  heelless  shoes  of  stuff  or 
leather,  often  elaborately  ornamented. 

Such  in  appearance  were  the  castle  and  the 
lady.  Doubtless  it  would  be  absurd  to  represent 
the  social  status  of  the  lady  as  the  direct  outcome 
of  the  architecture  of  her  home,  since  both  were 
in  fact  the  outcome  and  expression  of  the  life  of 
the  man  of  her  class  and  time.  But  it  is  certain 
that  the  castle  was  the  primary  condition  of  that 
life,  and  that,  where  its  interests  clashed  with 
those  of  the  lady,  hers  had  to  give  way.  In  her 
everyday  life  she  perhaps  gained  as  much  from 
its  limitations  as  she  lost.  If,  for  instance,  the 
knight  had  wished  as  earnestly  as  did  the  Greek 
to  seclude  his  womankind,  he  could  not  have 


ii6  THE  LADY 

done  it;  the  donjon  admitted  of  no  gyneceum. 
Though  the  lady  had  no  privacy,  she  suffered 
no  isolation.  Her  place  was  in  the  hall,  and  in 
the  hall  the  life  of  the  house  was  transacted. 
Whatever  interested  her  husband  was  discussed 
in  her  presence.  If  a  neighbour  rode  over  to 
invite  him  to  join  a  foray  or  a  crusade,  the  lady 
could  not  but  know  what  was  in  the  wind.  If 
she  lost  in  refinement  she  gained  in  education. 
The  life  of  her  time  was  an  open  book  before 
her;  she  was  free  to  form  her  opinion  of  men 
and  things  and  to  make  her  personality  count 
for  what  it  was  worth. 

But  the  really  sinister  effect  upon  the  lady  of 
the  castle  and  its  lands  was  one  that  resulted 
from  their  meaning  rather  than  from  their  phys- 
ical characteristics.  They  were  held  by  the 
knight  from  his  overlord  on  condition  of  the  pay- 
ment of  rental  in  the  form  of  military  service. 
Every  acre  of  ground  was  valued  in  terms  of 
fighting-men,  and  only  the  knight  in  person 
could  be  sure  of  rallying  the  quota  and  produc- 
ing them  when  required.  If  the  knight  died, 
in  harness  or  in  his  bed,  and  left  a  widow  with 
young  children  or  a  daughter  as  his  sole  heir, 
there  was  a  good  chance  that  the  rent  would  not 
be  paid.  The  overlord  had  the  right,  in  view 
of  his  interests  in  the  matter,  to  see  that  a  fief 
should  not  be  without  a  master;  in  other  words, 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE    117 

to  marry  as  soon  as  might  be  the  widow  or  the 
daughter  of  the  deceased  to  some  stout  knight 
who  was  willing  to  take  the  woman  for  the  sake 
of  the  fief. 

"One  of  these  days,"  says  the  king  in  Char- 
roi  de  Nimes  to  a  baron  who  is  threatening  him, 
"one  of  these  days  one  of  my  peers  will  die;  I 
will  give  you  his  fief  and  his  wife,  if  you  will 
take  her."  In  fact,  it  could  be  said  of  the  lady  as 
truly  as  of  the  serf  that  she  "went  with  the  land." 
She  knew  this  full  well  herself.  In  the  romance 
of  Girars  de  Viane  the  Duchess  of  Bourgogne 
came  to  the  king,  saying:  "My  husband  is  dead, 
but  of  what  avail  is  mourning?  Give  me  a 
strong  man  to  my  husband,  for  I  am  sore 
pressed  to  defend  my  land."  Young  girls  came 
quite  simply  on  the  same  errand.  Helissent, 
daughter  of  Yon  of  Gascony,  presented  herself 
before  Charlemagne  and  all  his  court  with  this 
practical  statement:  "Two  months  ago  my  father 
died;  I  am  come  to  ask  for  a  husband."  Far- 
seeing  men  betrothed  or  even  married  their  chil- 
dren in  infancy.  Hardy  younger  sons  might  win 
castle  and  lands  by  recommending  themselves 
through  feats  of  arms  to  fathers  of  daughters. 
Thus  the  aged  Aimeri,  in  the  En  fans  Aimeri, 
wished  to  provide  for  his  sons  by  marriage.  To 
Garin  he  said :  "Go  to  Bavaria  and  bid  the  Duke 
Naimes  to  give  you  his  daughter,  with  the  city 


ii8  THE  LADY 

of  Anseiine,  it  harbours  and  shores.  It  is  true 
this  land  is  at  the  moment  in  the  hands  of  the 
Saracens,  but  you  have  only  to  take  it  from 
them."  Garin  makes  his  way  to  Bavaria,  and 
explains  his  idea  to  the  duke.  "You  are  of  high 
race,"  answers  the  duke,  "and  I  will  give  you 
my  daughter  of  the  fair  face."  He  called  for 
her  forthwith.  "Belle,"  said  he,  "I  have  given 
you  a  husband."  "Blessed  be  God!"  said  the 
damsel. 

In  one  aspect  or  another  the  identification  of 
the  fief  and  the  lady  provides  the  motive  of  a 
hundred  chansons.  It  is  the  basis  of  her  social 
importance,  superseding  the  production  of  legit- 
imate offspring,  which  was  the  basis  of  her 
social  importance  in  Greece  and,  theoretically 
at  any  rate,  in  Rome.  It  would,  perhaps,  be 
paradoxical  to  say  that  a  baron  would  prefer  to 
be  sure  that  his  tenure  was  secure  than  that  his 
son  was  legitimate,  but  it  is  certain  that  the  rela- 
tive value  of  the  two  things  had  shifted.  The 
rehabilitation  of  the  bastard  was  well  under  way, 
and  formed  a  class  of  which  we  may  perhaps 
consider  that  a  man  like  Dunois  was  the  culmi- 
nation. It  is  far  from  paradoxical  to  say  that,  as 
a  sort  of  indemnification  for  the  iron  hand  laid 
upon  her  destiny  by  the  system  of  land-tenure 
in  the  Middle  Age,  the  lady  achieved  a  new 
measure  of  personal  liberty.  She  might  within 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE    119 

reason  philander  where  she  would,  provided  she 
married  where  she  was  bid. 

The  lady's  education  was  probably,  on  the  ac- 
ademic side  at  least,  considerably  better  than 
her  husband's.  Very  likely  she  could  more  of- 
ten read  and  write  than  he.  But,  as  in  Homeric 
days,  the  want  of  reading  was  supplied  for  man 
and  woman  alike  by  the  accomplishments  of  the 
rhapsode,  who  is  now  called  a  jongleur.  Old 
and  young,  masters  and  servants,  gathered  after 
dinner  in  the  hall  to  hear  the  deeds  of  princes, 
or  love-songs,  or  the  lives  of  the  saints,  accord- 
ing to  the  taste  of  the  audience  or  the  gift  of  the 
minstrel.  It  is  hard  to  realise  how  uniform 
must  have  been  the  view  of  life,  which  was  ac- 
quired not  by  private  reading,  but  in  groups 
from  a  conventional  source.  Such  as  it  was,  it 
was  alike  for  both  sexes.  Not  only  in  literary 
but  in  practical  matters  the  daughter  of  the  castle 
would  receive  much  the  same  education  as 
Helen  of  Troy.  She  would  be  a  famous  spin- 
ster and  needlewoman,  able  to  make  a  shirt  or 
an  altar-cloth.  She  would  sit  by  the  hour 
among  her  damsels  in  hall  or  in  garden,  develop- 
ing stitch  by  stitch  that  incredible  faculty  of 
patience  which  alone  has  enabled  the  lady  of  all 
times  to  live  with  health  and  without  too  much 
analysis  her  life  of  constant  suspension  on  the 
acts  of  another.  All  household  work  was  fa- 


120  THE  LADY 

miliar  to  her.  Life  was  full  of  emergencies, 
and  she  was  ready  for  them.  Often  she  was  a 
skilful  leech,  unafraid  of  blood,  trained  to  suc- 
cour the  men  on  whose  lives  her  life  depended. 
The  tradition  of  the  "wise  woman"  still  hung 
about  her,  and  she  had  secret  recipes  for  medi- 
cines that  could  cure  almost  any  ill.  When 
Aucassin  fell  from  his  horse  and  dislocated  his 
shoulder,  Nicolette  set  it  for  him.  "She 
handled  it  so  with  her  white  hands  and  la- 
boured so  much  that,  by  God's  will  who  loves 
lovers,  it  came  into  its  place ;  and  then  she  took 
flowers  and  fresh  grass  and  green  leaves  and 
bound  them  upon  it  with  the  flap  of  her 
chemise,  and  he  was  quite  healed."  In  re- 
ligion she  learned  the  Pater  Noster,  the  Ave 
and  the  Credo.  She  could  read  her  book  of 
hours  and  follow  the  mass. 

The  cult  of  the  Virgin  had  virtually  restored 
the  feminine  divinity  of  primitive  religion,  and 
men  and  women  repeated  daily  the  popular 
prayer  to  Mary  which  has  been  handed  down 
in  hundreds  of  manuscripts:  "I  come  to-day  to 
implore  you,  Virgin  Mary.  May  you  with  all 
the  saints  and  the  elect  of  God  be  near  me  to 
give  counsel  and  support  for  all  my  prayers  and 
requests,  in  all  my  pains  and  necessities,  in  all 
that  I  am  called  upon  to  do,  to  say  and  to  think, 
every  day,  every  hour,  every  instant  of  my  life." 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE    121 

It  is  necessary  for  our  purpose  to  try  to  form 
a  notion  of  what  occupation  the  lady  found  for 
the  greater  number  of  the  days,  hours  and  in- 
stants of  her  life.  The  romantic  vision  that 
sees  her  dividing  her  time  between  awarding 
the  prize  at  the  tourney  and  presiding  at  the 
Court  of  Love  may  be  abandoned  at  once.  In 
its  place  there  rises  almost  inevitably  a  picture 
somewhat  nearer  the  truth,  but  drawn  also  from 
the  romances  and  founded  on  the  conditions  of 
life  at  the  courts  of  kings  and  great  lords. 
There  the  simple  structure  of  the  castle  had  ex- 
panded, and  with  it  the  social  structure.  A 
great  hall,  separate  from  the  donjon,  was  the 
theatre  of  stately  action.  Increased  space 
brought  with  it  a  more  complicated  scheme  of 
life.  In  the  lord's  castle  were  assembled  for 
courtly  education  the  sons  and  daughters  of  his 
vassals,  who  rilled  the  place  with  gaiety.  There 
was  the  frequent  coming  and  going  of  guests, 
the  solemn  departure  of  the  baron  to  war  and 
his  triumphant  home-coming — the  whole  busi- 
ness, in  a  word,  of  the  chansons  de  geste  and  the 
romances.  We  see  the  lady's  life  spent  in  per- 
petual summer-time.  She  spins  with  her  maid- 
ens in  the  garden,  while  a  comely  youth  recites 
a  tale  of  love,  or  she  wanders  in  the  meadow 
gathering  flowers  for  a  chaplet.  On  the  grass 
or  in  the  hall  she  organises  a  merry  dance  of 


122  THE  LADY 

damoisel  with  damoiseau,  or  she  sits  down  to 
play  a  game  of  chess  with  Sir  Renaud,  newly 
returned  from  the  Crusade.  Even  when  her 
good  lord  is  gone  to  the  Holy  Land  she  enter- 
tains freely  and  takes  what  cheer  she  may.  It 
is  the  metier  of  the  romance  to  deal  with  action, 
and  from  it  we  receive  inevitably  the  impression 
of  a  stirring,  animated  life.  Where  the  house 
of  the  great  lord  is  concerned  this  impression 
may  be  measurably  true,  though  even  there  we 
must  remember  that  winter  came  round  at  suit- 
able intervals.  But  in  the  castle  of  the  simple 
knight,  life,  as  far  as  we  are  able  to  reconstitute 
it,  must  have  passed  with  a  monotony  before 
which  the  modern  mind  quails.  When  Gautier, 
an  enthusiast  for  the  Middle  Age,  enumerates 
the  winter  occupations  of  the  castellan,  he  is 
obliged  to  include  sitting  at  the  window  and 
watching  the  snow  fall.  The  lady  of  the  castle 
was  vigorous,  and  loved  to  be  out  of  doors. 
She  rode,  seated  either  astride  or  on  what  seems 
to  us  the  wrong  side  of  the  horse.  She  hunted 
with  the  hawk  and  angled  in  the  streams.  She 
was  a  strong  walker  and  lover  of  animals,  show- 
ing her  love,  as  most  animal  lovers  do,  by  petting 
within  doors  and  killing  without.  High  phys- 
ical courage  was  esteemed  a  virtue  in  her  as  in 
her  lord,  for  it  is  only  in  secure  and  peaceful 
societies  that  the  timid  lady  survives  to  transmit 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE    123 

her  qualities.  High  physical  courage  should 
ideally  beget  tenderness  for  suffering,  but  the 
lady  of  the  romances  was  sometimes  a  little  in- 
accessible on  the  sympathetic  side. 

When  William,  Count  of  Orange,  fled  to  his 
castle  after  his  defeat  by  the  paynim  at  Alis- 
cans,  with  twenty  thousand  Turks  in  pursuit,  he 
wore  Saracen  armour,  and  owed  his  life  to  the 
ruse.  But  Guibourc,  his  wife,  did  not  recog- 
nise him,  though  she  parleyed  with  him  face  to 
face,  and  would  not  open  the  gate.  The  good 
knight  was  the  sole  survivor  of  his  army;  he 
was  wounded,  and  he  had  been  fighting  for 
sixty  hours.  But  with  one  reproachful  look  at 
his  hard-hearted  lady,  he  turned  upon  the  hun- 
dred Saracens  who  were  immediately  upon  his 
heels  and,  single-handed,  put  them  to  flight  and 
released  their  Christian  captives.  Then  turn- 
ing to  Guibourc,  who  stood  watching  upon  the 
gate,  "Am  I  William?"  he  asked.  This  some- 
what grotesque  episode  is  founded  on  a  real 
characteristic  of  the  lady  of  the  castle.  As  her 
knight  fought  for  her  honour  she  preferred 
him  to  incur  danger  rather  than  defeat;  wounds 
and  broken  bones  were,  so  to  speak,  all  in  the 
day's  work.  And  when  the  day  was  won  she 
succoured  him  tenderly. 

The  hardihood  which  served  her  well  in 
crises  was  an  invaluable  element  of  daily  life 


I24  THE  LADY 

for  herself  and  for  her  offspring,  as  it  led  her  to 
healthy  and  vigorous  out-of-door  pastimes. 
But  after  the  fullest  allowance  has  been  made 
for  these  pursuits,  many  empty  hours  remain 
unaccounted  for.  Life  for  the  lady  in  the  small 
castle  must  have  had  some  similarity  to  life  for 
women  on  the  remote  ranch  to-day,  if  we  elim- 
inate the  postal  service  and  the  library,  and  if 
we  imagine  that  the  ranchman  is  away  from 
home  as  often  as  he  can  manage  it,  rounding  up 
wild  cattle,  fighting  Indians,  trailing  horse- 
thieves,  or  otherwise  pleasurably  endangering 
his  life.  His  wife  will  probably  learn  to  ride 
and  shoot;  she  will  busy  herself  with  house- 
keeping, with  her  children  or  with  her  garden. 
But,  after  all,  she  can  always  read.  The  news- 
papers and  the  magazines  find  her  out.  She 
will  keep  herself  supplied  with  books.  And  if 
the  worst  comes  to  the  worst  she  will  write  a 
novel.  The  aspect  of  life  that  comes  to  the 
modern  woman  under  the  guise  of  literature  had 
a  different  expression,  though  largely  literary 
too,  in  the  existence  of  the  lonely  chatelaine. 
In  her  case  it  came  to  be  a  reflection  of  the  social 
development  for  which  the  age  is  noted,  a  spe- 
cific and  original  contribution  to  the  history  of 
the  lady — I  mean,  of  course,  the  theory  and 
practice  of  courteous  love.  In  looking  closely 
at  this  institution  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  in 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE    125 

the  age  of  chivalry  the  wedded  relation  was  not 
a  romantic  one.  The  husband  was  allowed  by 
law  to  beat  his  wife  for  certain  offences,  and  it  is 
likely  that  he  did  not  always  wait  to  consult 
the  code.  The  law,  it  is  true,  specified  that  he 
was  to  beat  her  "reasonably,"  and  insisted  that 
he  must  stop  short  of  maiming  her;  he  must  not, 
for  instance,  destroy  an  eye  or  break  a  bone. 
Her  marriage  had  been  contracted  without  any 
necessary  reference  to  inclination,  and  her  rela- 
tions with  her  husband  were  simply  such  as  she 
was  personally  able  to  make  them.  With  him 
her  sole  source  of  strength  was  her  power  to 
please,  and  that  was  naturally,  as  always,  largely 
a  matter  of  accident.  He  was  under  no  manner 
of  compulsion  to  try  to  please  her.  The  fact, 
however,  that  she  was  his  wife  gave  her  impor- 
tance with  the  rest  of  the  world  in  proportion 
to  his  own,  and  from  the  standing-ground  of  this 
external  importance  she  applied  her  lever  to  so- 
ciety. 

In  her  lord's  absence  she  commanded  the  cas- 
tle; in  his  presence  she  shared  the  respect  paid 
him  by  his  subordinates.  And  the  whole  ordi- 
nary population  of  the  castle  consisted  of  subor- 
dinates. Not  only  his  servants  and  men-at-arms, 
but  the  knights  who  held  of  him  in  fee  and  the 
squires  who  waited  on  him  for  military  educa- 
tion observed  towards  him  the  etiquette  of  in- 


126  THE  LADY 

ferior  to  superior.  This  etiquette  was  strictly 
personal  to  him,  and  his  wife  had  logically  no 
right  to  share  in  it;  but  it  was  inevitably  re- 
flected on  her  by  the  sentiment  that  to-day  makes 
the  enlisted  man  in  a  lonely  army  post  feel  that 
the  colonel's  wife  very  nearly  holds  a  commis- 
sion herself.  Like  the  colonel's  wife,  the 
knight's  lady  was  the  social  head  of  the  garri- 
son; but  she  had  the  advantage  of  being  free 
from  competition  with  the  wives  of  subalterns. 
If  the  visiting  knight  or  squire  had  a  wife,  she 
stayed  at  home.  The  lady  of  the  castle  was  vir- 
tually the  only  woman  in  a  society  consisting 
of  men  generally  younger  than  herself  who  were 
socially  her  husband's  inferiors,  and  who  there- 
fore paid  court  to  her.  If  she  had  any  personal 
force  or  charm  these  circumstances  were  highly 
favourable  to  its  exertion.  With  her  husband's 
importance  her  sphere  of  influence  would  vary 
from  a  single  squire  to  a  whole  train  of  knights- 
vassal,  but  her  position  would  tend  to  stereotype 
itself ;  so  that  the  success  of  a  great  baron's  wife 
in  modifying  the  manners  and  the  ideas  of  her 
husband's  court  would  work  to  the  advantage  of 
the  lonely  chatelaine  in  the  simple  donjon. 
From  the  great  centres  would  spread  a  theory 
of  the  lady's  position  and  of  the  duty  to  her  of 
every  gentleman  not  her  husband.  Such  a  the- 
ory was  developed  and  perfected  in  the  twelfth 


The   lady   as   physician. 

From    a   fifteenth    century    MS.,    reproduced    in    Wrights's    Womankind    in 
western  Europe. 

See  p.   120 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE    127 

and  thirteenth  centuries,  and  came  by  degrees 
to  colour  the  whole  of  literature.  The  brutal- 
ity of  the  old  romances  faded  out,  and  an  ex- 
traordinary code  of  manners  came  into  fashion, 
based  on  a  new  theory  of  feminism  and  largely 
due  to  the  initiative  of  influential  women  them- 
selves. How  far  this  theory  actually  modified 
life  we  are  not  in  a  position  to  say.  It  is  cer- 
tain, however,  that  every  lady  who  listened 
to  troubadour  or  jongleur,  or  who  read  for  her- 
self the  new  love-songs  and  romances,  was 
furnished  with  the  material  for  constructing  a 
fresh  estimate  of  her  own  importance.  As 
Maitre  Jean  Petit  remarked  in  the  thirteenth 
century:  En  femme  a  puissance  et  vertu  de 
faire  de  sen  baron  ou  de  sen  ami  le  plus  de  sa 
volente. 

II 

IT  is  characteristic  of  the  Middle  Age  to 
present  us  with  an  astonishing  homogeneity 
of  impression.     One  chanson  is  very  like 
another,  and  the  songs  of  the  troubadours  are 
in  many  cases  interchangeable.     Everything  is 
done  according  to  rule,  with  the  striking  com- 
bination,   paradoxical,    but   found   everywhere 
in  primitive  life  and  art,  of  the  na'ive  and  the 
conventional.     Theology,   war,   law,    art   and 


i28  THE  LADY 

education  were  elaborated  into  systems  and 
welded  upon  society,  which  to  this  day  shows 
the  malformations  due  to  their  long  pressure. 
In  such  an  age  it  was  not  to  be  hoped  that 
manners  and  the  human  heart  could  be  left 
without  a  code  after  their  existence  had  once 
been  noticed.  It  is  at  the  Court  of  Henry  the 
First  of  England  that  scholars  find  the  first 
development  of  "courtesy."  This  prince  an- 
ticipated Fontainebleau  and  Versailles  by  the 
fetes  he  arranged  at  his  castles  and  the  attention 
he  gave  to  the  organisation  of  bi-sexual  society. 
Geoffrey  of  Monmouth,  writing  at  the  end  of 
this  reign  a  description  of  the  ideal  court  of 
King  Arthur,  doubtless  describes  what  he  saw 
about  him,  a  society  (he  says)  which  surpassed 
all  others  in  luxury  and  in  politeness,  where 
knights  were  famous  for  prowess  and  ladies  for 
courtesy,  where  the  valour  of  knights  en- 
couraged the  ladies  to  strive  for  womanly  per- 
fection, and  the  love  of  ladies  spurred  the 
valour  of  knights.  If  we  may  believe  that  the 
theory  of  courtesy,  formulated  in  England, 
spread  from  this  source  into  France,  it  is  cer- 
tain that  it  there  encountered  an  independent 
development,  sprung  from  the  south,  less  war- 
like and  more  feminine  in  form,  which  was 
destined  to  prevail  and  give  tone  to  the  whole 


129 

movement,  not  only  in  France,  north  and  south, 
but  throughout  Europe. 

South  of  the  Loire  the  Roman  law  had  always 
maintained  a  thread  of  continuity,  though  often 
obscured  by  usages  springing  directly  from  al- 
tered ways  of  living.  By  the  Theodosian  code, 
sons  and  daughters  alike  shared  the  inheritance 
of  their  father's  estate,  and  this  rule  was  taken 
over  by  the  Gothic  law  of  Southern  France. 
But  under  the  strain  of  the  centuries  that  kept 
society  perpetually  on  a  war  footing,  the 
tendency  prevailed  even  here  to  hold  lands  and 
houses  in  the  strong  hand.  For  her  own  safety 
the  daughter  was  subordinated  to  the  son. 
When  the  Saracens  were  finally  disposed  of  a 
time  of  comparative  quiet  produced  some  very 
surprising  results.  That  great  material  pros- 
perity should  follow  was  not  surprising.  The 
rich  land  blossomed  like  the  rose;  its  vineyards 
not  only  made  glad  the  heart  of  man  but  filled 
his  purse;  commerce  developed  and  civic 
society  began  to  feel  assured  of  its  existence; 
law  was  able  to  hold  its  own  against  might,  and 
therefore  the  lady  who  was  lawful  owner  of 
lands  could  hold  them  in  peace.  Many  are 
the  beautiful  names  of  ladies  who  ruled  in  their 
own  persons — Adelaide  Countess  of  Carcas- 
sonne, Ermengarde  Viscountess  of  Beziers, 


i3o  THE  LADY 

Guillemette  Viscountess  of  Nimes,  and  the  great 
Eleanor  of  Poitou,  granddaughter  of  the  first 
of  the  troubadours,  Queen  first  of  France  and 
then  of  England,  and  always  in  her  own  right 
Duchess  of  Aquitaine.  These  ladies  were 
almost  by  accident  furnished  with  great  power 
by  a  system  devised  for  a  society  of  a  different 
character  altogether.  It  is  interesting  to  con- 
sider the  amazement  with  which  Theodosius 
would  have  viewed  the  career  of  Ermengarde 
Viscountess  of  Narbonne,  who,  although  twice 
married,  ruled  her  principality  with  her  own 
hand  for  sixty  years  and  fought  her  own  battles 
with  success.  As  in  the  case  of  the  lady  abbess, 
feudalism  played  into  the  hands  of  the  very  per- 
sons to  whose  interests  it  was  apparently  inim- 
ical. A  form  of  society  devised  and  carried 
on  by  men  became  suddenly  a  source  of  strength 
to  women.  And  the  most  surprising  thing  of 
all  is  that  the  women  in  whose  hands  power 
was  thus  placed  proved  to  be  able  to  use  it. 
Instead  of  showing  as  the  atrophied  remnant 
of  a  suppressed  class,  ready  to  govern  in  name 
but  in  reality  to  be  governed  by  the  nearest  man, 
and  to  carry  on  a  society  and  a  culture  imitative 
of  that  erected  by  men  everywhere  about  them, 
they  proved  to  be  themselves  personages  capable 
of  forming  reasoned  designs  and  making  them 
prevail,  and  they  effected  changes  in  society  and 


culture  that  have  become  a  permanent  part  of 
the  life  of  Europe. 

It  has  often  been  pointed  out  that  there  are 
certain  analogies  between  the  period  of  the 
Crusades  and  the  nineteenth  century  in  the 
United  States  in  respect  of  the  distribution  of 
culture  between  the  sexes.  In  Greece  and  in 
Rome  of  old,  as  in  Germany  in  the  last  century, 
and  in  general  at  times  and  in  places  where 
men  have  leisure  for  culture,  it  is  believed  to 
belong  more  or  less  exclusively  to  the  male 
type.  It  is  felt  at  such  times  to  be  unsuitable 
for  women.  The  learned  or  the  thoughtful 
woman  is  rather  ridiculous,  and  certainly  a 
bore.  Probably  she  neglects  her  children. 
On  the  other  hand,  when  men  are  as  a  class  en- 
gaged in  the  subjugation  of  the  natural  world 
or  in  struggles  with  each  other,  the  arts  of 
peace  naturally  fall  into  the  hands  of  non-com- 
batants, and  are  then  believed  to  belong  more 
or  less  exclusively  to  the  female  type.  As 
under  the  other  conditions  culture  is  felt  to  be 
unbecoming  in  woman,  it  is  now  felt  to  be  un- 
becoming in  man.  A  fighting  knight  who 
found  his  squire  reading  the  Ars  Amatoria 
would  feel  the  same  amused  contempt  as  a 
stockbroker  who  should  find  his  clerk  secreting 
a  copy  of  Keats  behind  the  ticker.  To  the  mind 
of  each  such  interests  would  be  suitable  only 


132  THE  LADY 

to  women  and  to  certain  men — "priests"  the 
crusader  would  have  called  them,  "college  pro- 
fessors" the  broker.  In  both  periods  the  lady 
has  been  the  depository  and  guardian  of 
culture.  What  she  has  made  of  her  position  in 
modern  times  must  be  discussed  elsewhere. 
Her  achievements  in  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth 
centuries  are  matter  of  record,  and  we  must 
now  examine  them. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  automatic  result  of  mak- 
ing a  lady  the  head  of  the  state  will  be  to  furnish 
her  court  with  persons  whose  recommendations 
to  favour  will  differ  from  those  offered  to  a 
male  superior.  It  will,  of  course,  be  to  her  in- 
terest to  employ  and  attach  to  herself  a  body  of 
strong  fighting  men,  but  she  will  not  be  in- 
terested in  personally  observing  their  readiness 
for  combat  and  their  power  to  drink  without 
drunkenness.  To  be  pleasant  to  his  lady  a 
servant  must  develop  other  gifts.  In  the  tech- 
nical language  of  the  time,  courtesy  must 
accompany  prowess.  Grafted  upon  the  funda- 
mental point  of  view  of  the  fighting  knight,  and 
in  many  respects  opposed  to  it,  was  a  secondary 
set  of  ideas  which,  by  the  transforming  power 
of  literature,  has  become  to  us  the  strongest 
element  of  the  whole.  By  chivalry  we  mean 
to-day  not  the  strong,  hard  framework  of  mili- 
tary society  which  prevailed  for  centuries  in 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE     133 

Europe,  unregardful  of  women  if  not  cruel  to 
them,  but  we  mean  the  brief  and  local  phase, 
confined  chiefly  to  the  great  courts,  which,  by, 
passing  into  literature,  has  forever  clothed  the 
knight  with  virtues  and  sentiments  not  (if  all 
had  their  rights)  his  own.  The  constraint 
that  was  put  upon  the  man  who  looked  for 
preferment  in  a  lady's  service  to  be  clean  and 
civil,  pleasant  to  look  at  and  pleasant  to  hear, 
and  an  ardent  advocate  of  the  intellectual  and 
moral  supremacy  of  women,  was  but  a  small 
and  ephemeral  result  of  her  power.  The  real 
result  was  attained  when  the  men  of  genius  had 
constructed  and  won  acceptance  everywhere 
for  a  whole  theory  of  life  based  on  the 
superiority  of  the  lady.  At  all  times,  every- 
where and  by  all  ladies,  love  is  admitted  to  be 
the  most  acceptable  of  gifts.  With  tact  the 
humblest  may  offer  it  without  offence,  the 
highest  without  conferring  obligation.  The 
lady's  power  to  excite  love  was  to  her  what  the 
lord's  prowess  in  battle  was  to  him.  The  new 
theory  of  life  was  therefore  based  upon  a  new 
theory  of  love,  and  into  this  new  theory  were 
worked  up  a  number  of  old  elements  that 
would  have  seemed  singly  rather  unpromising 
material. 

One  of   the   fundamental   principles   of   the 
doctrine  of  courteous  love  was  its  incompati- 


134  THE  LADY 

bility  with  marriage.  It  is  true  that  no  age 
of  men  had  imagined  that  love  and  marriage 
were  ever,  except  by  accident,  coincident. 
Since  marriage  is  primarily  founded  on  eco- 
nomic considerations,  the  continued  effort  of 
mankind  to  make  its  sentimental  aspect  prevail 
involves  a  paradox.  The  Athenians,  as  we  have 
seen,  looked  not  to  their  wives  for  love's  de- 
light. The  Romans  were  not  authorities  on 
love,  but  what  they  knew  by  that  name  was  not 
a  domestic  sentiment.  Early  Christianity  also 
considered  marriage  as  a  duty  rather  than  a 
pleasure.  But  these  different  societies  had  felt 
the  irksomeness  of  the  bond  from  the  man's 
point  of  view;  it  was  in  conflict  with  one  of  the 
characteristics  that  had  been  most  serviceable 
in  helping  him  along  in  the  world — his  un- 
quenchable desire  of  novelty.  Courtesy,  on 
the  other  hand,  objected  to  marriage  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  wife.  Courtesy  maintained 
that  a  lady's  love  should  be  free.  The  mere 
fact  that  in  marriage  she  was  bound  by  law  to 
yield  her  favours  destroyed  their  value  and  her 
dignity.  Even  if  she  married  her  lover,  she 
thereby  extinguished  love.  Amour  de  grace 
and  amour  de  dette  were  discriminated  by  the 
doctors,  who  held  the  first  only  to  be  worthy 
of  the  name  of  love.  No  true  lover  would 
accept  love  save  as  a  gift  of  free  will.  The  lady 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE    135 

might  withhold  her  favour  with  reason  or  with- 
out; treason  to  love  consisted  in  bestowing  it  for 
any  reason  save  love  alone.  But  it  was  not  as 
a  pretext  for  frequent  change  that  the  lady 
exalted  love  at  the  expense  of  marriage.  On  the 
contrary,  it  behoved  her  to  choose  her  lover 
with  far  greater  care  than  her  husband  (says 
Sordello  in  his  Ensenhamen  d'Onor),  because 
love  is  plus  fort  establit.  Husband  and  wife 
may  be  parted  by  divers  accidents,  mas  no  es 
res  que  puesc'  amors,  ses  mort,  partir.  If  we 
were  to  represent  the  history  of  marriage  graph- 
ically by  a  straight  line,  and  the  history  of  love 
by  a  curve  approaching  marriage  more  or  less 
closely,  we  should  find  the  lady's  theory  of  love 
soaring  as  far  above  marriage  toward  the  ideal 
as  Ovid's  theory  falls  below  it  toward  the  beast. 
His  criticism  of  marriage  was  that  it  was  too 
good;  hers  that  it  was  not  good  enough.  The 
striking  modernism  of  this  view  is  more  ap- 
parent than  real.  The  lady  dreamed  of  no 
reconstruction  of  society;  marriage  was  her 
portion,  and  she  accepted  it.  Love  did  not 
interfere  with  it — did  not,  in  fact,  lie  in  the 
same  plane.  Her  criticism  of  marriage  was 
suggested  and  enforced  by  a  number  of  cir- 
cumstances besides  her  own  personal  revolt 
from  it.  The  poets  who  embodied  her  ideas 
were  generally  of  a  class  below  her  own,  and 


136  THE  LADY 

under  chivalry  there  was  no  marriage  possible 
between  classes.  The  singer  who  offered 
homage  to  his  lady  must  find  some  footing  on 
which  he  could  address  her  without  too  servile 
an  acknowledgment  of  inferiority.  Nothing 
could  have  served  his  purpose  so  well  as  the 
theory  that  love  is  the  great  leveller,  but  that 
every  lover  is  his  lady's  servant.  Besides 
the  barriers  to  marriage  erected  by  feudal 
society,  the  Cluniac  reform  was  insisting  on  the 
celibacy  of  the  clergy,  but  many  a  troubadour 
was  either  monk  or  priest.  For  him  also  it  was 
valuable  that  love  should  keep  clear  of  mar- 
riage. 

The  old  May  songs  celebrating  spring-time 
and  the  na'ive  mating  impulse  had  come  down 
without  a  break  from  immemorial  heathendom, 
from  the  dim  time  when  mating  was  cotermi- 
nous with  desire.  And  these  May  songs,  with 
the  necessary  transformations,  were  taken  up 
into  the  song  of  the  troubadour.  With  their 
eternal  cry  of  spring  they  are,  indeed,  wherever 
they  leave  their  trace,  in  epic  or  conte  or  song, 
almost  the  only  note  of  Nature  in  the  literature 
of  the  Middle  Age.  The  nightingale,  the  bud- 
ding flowers,  the  clear  skies  of  spring,  are  all 
that  the  knight  notices  of  the  world's  aspect. 
Their  imagery  becomes  greasy  with  handling 
as  singer  after  singer  compares  the  birth  of  love 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE    137 

with  the  birth  of  summer.  Charmed  at  first 
with  what  he  has  taken  to  be  evidence  of  the 
poet's  communion  with  Nature,  the  reader  is 
soon  driven  to  recognise  a  pure  convention. 
The  natural  world  has  little  to  say  to  the 
troubadour.  His  world  is  within,  and  if  he  had 
not  needed  the  eroticism  of  the  May  song  he 
would  have  given  scant  heed  to  the  nightingale. 
From  the  May  song  he  drew  the  ajoy"  that  gave 
a  name  to  his  science  and  a  crude  literal  view 
of  the  delight  of  love.  But  the  joy  came 
gradually  to  have  a  more  spiritual  content. 
What  the  lady  demanded  was  to  be  loved  for 
her  soul.  As  the  type  reached  perfection  the 
May  song  element  dissolved  into  the  mysticism 
that  was  to  culminate  in  Dante's  love  for 
Beatrice. 

Ill 

THE  tendency  of  the  Middle  Age  toward 
the   neat,   the   systematic   and   the   en- 
cyclopaedic, which  made  it  so  easy  a 
prey  to  Aristotle,  had  the  oddest  results  when 
directed  toward   the   passion   of  love.    Ovid's 
jeu   d'esprit,  the   "Ars   Amatoria,"   was   play- 
fully   set    in    a    framework    of    Alexandrian 
didacticism.     It  was  mildly  amusing  in  his  day 
to  assume  that  rules  could  be  laid  down  by  the 


138  THE  LADY 

use  of  which  anyone  could  become  "a  master 
of  the  art  of  love,"  to  use  the  phrase  of  Diotima 
in  Plato's  Symposium.  This  work  was  well- 
known  to  clerks  in  its  Latin  form,  and  when 
love  became  a  matter  of  general  theoretical 
interest  it  was  rendered  into  French,  and  be- 
came the  text-book  of  the  subject.  Thanks  to 
its  method,  love  became  a  department  of 
scholasticism,  a  matter  of  definition  and  rule. 
In  the  complete  absence  of  the  historic  sense, 
which  left  the  mediaeval  mind  with  no  more 
perspective  than  the  paintings  on  a  castle  wall, 
Ovid's  badinage  became  matter  for  debate. 
The  social  conditions  assumed  in  every  line  of 
his  work  were  unnoticed.  He  wrote  of  and 
for  the  sophisticated  dwellers  in  a  great  town, 
for  the  members  of  a  cosmopolitan  society 
whose  intercourse  was  unrestrained,  for  a  culti- 
vated public  well  used  to  literary  allusion  and 
to  the  appreciation  of  the  half-word — for  life, 
in  a  word,  as  we  know  it  to-day  and  as  the 
Romans  knew  it  two  thousand  years  ago.  But 
the  knight  and  the  lady  of  the  castle  knew  no 
such  life.  Their  days  were  spent  in  a  simple 
round  among  a  small  number  of  people,  all 
ignorant  and  all  literal-minded.  Their  irrup- 
tions into  the  world,  whether  for  war  or  for 
gaiety,  were  infrequent  and  for  specific  pur- 
poses. They  were  utterly  without  the  daily 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE    139 

contact  with  many  minds,  which  was  the  postu- 
late of  Ovid's  psychology.  As  Gaston  Paris 
remarks:  "To  tell  the  truth,  the  Middle 
Age,  with  its  profound  incapacity  to  form 
a  picture  of  anything  but  itself,  was  never 
aware  of  the  abyss  that  lay  between  it  and  the 
ancient  world.  It  peacefully  translated  miles 
by  cavalier,  or  pontifex  by  bishop,  without 
dreaming  of  the  difference  between  the  ideas 
represented  by  these  words."  It  is  touching  to 
see  the  steps  by  which,  under  these  conditions, 
the  doctors  of  courteous  love  proceeded  to 
Christianise  and  feudalise  their  great  Latin 
authority.  When  Ovid  advises  the  enterprising 
young  man  to  frequent  the  theatres  whither  the 
ladies  go,  both  to  see  the  show  and  show  them- 
selves, Maitre  Elies  can  find  no  modern  parallel 
but  the  churches.  Thither  the  ladies  all  go, 
some  to  pray  to  God,  but  the  greater  number 
to  see  and  to  be  seen.  Ovid  suggests  to  the 
Roman  to  seat  himself  at  the  circus  close  to  the 
lady  he  wishes  to  charm  and  give  her  tips  on 
the  horses.  Maitre  Elies  sends  his  pupil  to 
a  miracle  play,  and  bids  him  ask  the  lady 
questions  about  the  cast:  "Which  are  laymen? 
Who  is  that  old  man?  Who  is  he  in  the  furred 
cloak?"  In  general  the  early  versions  of 
Ovid  are  more  decent  than  the  original ;  when 
they  are  gross  the  Roman's  refinement  of  vice 


i4o  THE  LADY 

is  not  reproduced.  In  some  cases  the  imitator 
ventures  to  differ  from  the  original.  Thus  the 
author  of  the  'Key  to  Love  says:  "Ovid  will 
have  us  believe  that  it  is  better  to  have  an  old 
woman  for  one's  love  than  a  young  one,  but 
with  all  respect  I  cannot  agree  with  him. 
Ovid,  I  imagine,  needed  money;  what  he  feels 
is  avarice,  not  love.  The  love  that  joins  gentle 
hearts  goes  straight  on  its  way  without  simony." 
The  whole  process  by  which  a  theology  of  love 
grew  up,  nourished  by  the  thoughts  and  lan- 
guage of  the  church,  is  foreshadowed  by  this 
unknown  clerk,  to  whom  venal  love  is  "simony." 
Some  items  of  advice  are  put  into  the  Roman 
author's  mouth  that  would  have  surprised  him: 
for  instance,  "Be  sure  there  are  no  wrinkles  in 
your  stockings;  this  is  Ovid's  express  com- 
mand." 

When  Eleanor  of  Aquitaine,  her  daughter 
Marie  of  Champagne,  and  the  other  precieuses 
had  arrived  through  much  discussion  at  a  fairly 
clear  idea  of  what  they  wanted,  the  work  of 
compiling  their  canon  law  was  confided  to  the 
author  of  the  Art  of  Honourable  Love, 
probably  Andreas  Capellanus,  who  was  at  once 
the  Gerson  and  the  Aquinas  of  the  passion.  No 
more  amusing  game  was  ever  invented  for  the 
entertainment  of  polite  society  than  the  method- 
ical discussion  of  love.  It  contained  something 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE    141 

for  everyone.  Under  cover  of  its  high  moral 
pretensions  and  scientific  aims  anything  could 
be  said.  The  earnest  and  the  frivolous,  the 
amorous  and  the  cool,  the  devout  and  the  care- 
less, all  were  furnished  with  a  decorous  means 
of  approach  to  the  most  fascinating  topic  in 
the  world.  Two  standards  are  visible  in  the 
chaplain's  work — the  first,  shorter  and  more 
famous  code  of  law  embodies  a  higher  ideal  of 
the  subject  in  hand  than  the  longer  one.  Con- 
cessions are  made  to  the  natural  man.  But,  on 
the  whole,  Ovid's  metamorphosis  is  complete. 
Where  he  enjoined  the  giving  of  gifts  as  a  means 
of  vulgar  seduction,  courtesy  held  that  the 
present  was  a  tribute  from  vassal  to  suzerain. 
Ovid  recommends  secrecy  to  the  lover  for  self- 
preservation,  but  the  code  commands  it  for  the 
lady's  sake.  Ovid  realised  that  leanness  and 
pallor  are  convenient  to  a  lover,  who  should 
assume  them  if  he  have  them  not,  to  work  upon 
the  feelings  of  his  mistress.  In  her  presence 
he  should  tremble  and  grow  pale.  According 
to  the  chaplain,  one  of  the  signs  of  a  true  lover 
is  his  physical  disturbance  in  presence  of  the 
beloved.  It  is  an  axiom  of  the  science  that  the 
sudden  sight  of  the  lady  alters  the  lover's  cir- 
culation. The  words  are  the  words  of  Ovid, 
and  the  emotion  is  not  just  that  of  Sappho. 
Nevertheless,  if  a  little  goodwill  went  to  pro- 


142  THE  LADY 

duce  the  vaso-motor  disturbance  that  was  the 
sign  of  love,  it  was  applied  with  the  intent  not 
to  deceive  the  lady,  but  to  play  the  game.  The 
spirit  of  the  code  can  be  gathered  from  a  few 
examples : — 

I.  Marriage  is  not  a  valid  excuse  from  love. 

13.  Common  love  seldom  endures. 

15.  Every  lover  is  wont  to  grow  pale  at  sight 
of  the  beloved. 

1 8.  Virtue  alone  makes  one  worthy  of  love. 

23.  The  thought  of  love  makes  a  man  sleep 
less  and  eat  less. 

24.  Every  action  of  the  lover  ends  in  thoughts 
of  the  beloved.  . 

25.  The  true  lover  cares  for  nothing  save  what 
he  deems  pleasant  to  the  beloved. 

30.  The  true  lover  is  forever  and  without  in- 
terruption occupied  by  the  image  of  the  be- 
loved. 

Among  the  theses  often  debated  by  the 
learned  in  love  were  those  that  dealt  with  the 
relative  desirability  of  a  knight  or  a  clerk  as 
a  lover,  and  as  the  clerks  controlled  the  records, 
they  have,  as  far  as  literature  goes,  the  best  of 
it.  The  Council  of  Remiremont,  a  Latin  poem 
of  probably  the  twelfth  or  thirteenth  cen- 
tury, gives  us  a  fanciful  account  of  a  debate  on 
this  topic,  set  in  a  framework  of  light-hearted 
blasphemy.  A  group  of  religious  ladies,  pre- 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE    143 

sided  over  by  a  "lady  cardinal,"  meet  (of 
course,  in  spring-time)  behind  closed  doors, 
expelling  all  men  save  a  few  honest  clerks,  and 
all  women  past  the  age  of  joy.  Beginning  with 
a  parody  on  the  office  of  the  church,  one  of  the 
company  reads  for  gospel  a  passage  from  Ovid, 
and  two  others  sing  hymns  of  love.  There 
follows  a  spirited  debate  between  the  advocates 
of  clerks  and  those  of  knights.  The  clerks  have 
the  best  of  it;  the  sense  of  the  meeting  is  that  it 
is  good  to  choose  them  as  lovers,  for  "their  love 
is  a  great  delight."  An  order  of  excommunica- 
tion against  rebels  is  drawn  up  in  the  name  of 
Venus:  "To  you  and  others  everywhere  who 
yield  to  the  love  of  knights  let  there  remain 
confusion,  terror,  contrition  and  many  other 
curses.  Amen." 

The  debate  was  one  of  the  most  congenial  ex- 
ercises of  the  Middle  Age.  To  defend  a  thesis 
was  in  some  sort  to  ride  a  tilt.  During  the  long 
centuries  when  the  church  was  occupied  with 
the  chim&ra  bombinans  in  vacuo,  society  dealt 
with  questions  of  greater  interest.  A  lady 
grieves  for  a  lover  taken  in  battle;  a  squire  can- 
not cease  to  love  a  lady  who  despises  him. 
Which  is  the  more  worthy  of  pity?  A  fair 
lady,  deserted  by  her  first  love,  bestows  her  affec- 
tions on  a  second;  is  she  perjured?  Of  these 
four  ladies,  which  is  the  most  pitiable — she 


144  THE  LADY 

whose  lover  was  slain  in  battle ;  she  whose  lover 
was  taken  prisoner;  she  whose  lover  has  not 
been  heard  of  since  the  battle;  she  whose  lover 
ran  away?  Which  lady  is  more  lovable — the 
foolish  beauty  or  the  plain-featured  wit?  Are 
men  or  women  the  more  constant  in  love? 

The  actual  songs  themselves  of  the  trouba- 
dours and  minnesingers,  oddest  of  love  lyrics, 
are  full  of  the  spirit  of  scholasticism.  Instead 
of  the  personal  cry  they  give  an  argument  on 
the  general  case.  Absorbed  in  a  technical  dis- 
cussion of  the  nature  of  love,  the  poet  sometimes 
forgot  altogether  to  explain  his  personal  interest 
in  the  subject.  The  traditionalism  of  theology 
was  strong  in  him.  The  progress  of  his  art 
was  in  form  alone;  like  the  theologian,  he  was 
content  to  work  over  and  over  an  established 
body  of  material.  Like  the  theologian,  he 
combined  by  main  strength  the  most  disparate 
elements,  not  noticing  their  essential  antago- 
nism if  he  could  bring  about  a  formal  union. 
In  many  a  song  he  lectured  to  his  beloved  on 
the  psychology  and  ethics  of  their  common  ex- 
perience. From  the  body  he  had  worked  his 
way  up  to  the  mind ;  before  the  movement  was 
spent  and  the  Middle  Age  disintegrated  he  had 
reached  the  soul. 

The  prevalence  of  formal  discussion,  the  im- 
mense allegorical  literature  of  the  Courts  of 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE    145 

Love,  and  certain  notices  of  the  decisions  of 
great  ladies,  made  arbiters  in  real  cases,  gave 
rise  at  one  time  to  the  notion  that  the  court  of 
love  was  an  actual  institution  whose  action  was 
binding  on  lovers  in  its  jurisdiction.  It  is  gen- 
erally admitted  to-day,  however,  that  the  evi- 
dence never  supported  such  a  theory,  and  that 
therefore  its  intrinsic  improbability  is  con- 
clusive against  it.  Secrecy  in  love  was  among 
the  lover's  first  duties.  Loyalty,  secrecy  and 
diligence  are  often  given  as  his  cardinal  virtues. 
Estre  secret  et  plaisant  was  his  formula.  It  is 
manifestly  absurd  to  suppose  that  a  sentiment 
which  depended  on  concealment  for  its  existence 
should  be  amenable  to  public  inquiry.  Doubt- 
less many  a  case,  theoretically  a  secret,  was 
dealt  with  by  innuendo ;  and  doubtless  many  an 
abstract  decision  delivered  by  a  great  lady  was 
felt  to  have  a  definite  address.  But  the  idea 
that  the  courteous  relation  was  capable  of  being 
haled  before  an  actual  court  needs  only  to  be 
stated  to  be  abandoned. 


146  THE  LADY 

IV 

f  •  ^HE  professional   troubadour  might  be 
attached  to  a  court  for  a  short  time 


1 


only,  and  without  payment  of  any  kind. 
The  prizes  of  life  consisted  for  him  in  per- 
manent awards  of  land  or  office,  and  later  of 
money.  The  commonest  fate  was  half  way  be- 
tween these  situations;  he  lived  at  court  as  an 
enlivener  of  society,  and  was  furnished  with  bed 
and  board,  and  in  favourable  cases  with  arms 
and  clothing.  The  songs  are  full  of  prayers 
for  the  opportunity  of  service  and  for  the  sub- 
stantial reward  of  service.  The  pretty  lan- 
guage of  feudal  relations,  easily  sliding  into 
allegory  even  then,  gives  romance  to-day  to  the 
singer's  cry.  Not  only  to  ladies,  but  to  lords, 
he  offers  true  and  loyal  service.  Walther  von 
der  Vogelweide  advertises  that  he  is  ready  to 
serve  any  gentleman  or  lady  who  will  reward 
him.  Often  a  poet  recommends  himself  in 
impassioned  language  to  a  lady  whom  he  has 
never  seen.  On  the  other  hand,  he  frequently 
reminds  her  that  he  has  been  her  servant  from 
his  childhood.  It  is  interesting  to  ask  oneself 
how  far  this  claim,  so  often  urged,  doubtless 
less  truthfully  in  some  cases  than  in  others,  be- 
coming part  of  the  technique  of  the  genre, 
determined  the  fact  that  Dante's  passion  dated 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE    147 

from  his  tenth  year.  The  troubadour  gen- 
erally vowed  that  his  service  should  last  as  long 
as  his  life;  yet  he  often  changed  his  allegiance, 
and  sometimes  set  off  his  praise  of  the  new  mis- 
tress by  disparagement  of  the  old.  According 
to  the  formula,  occurring  again  and  again  in 
song  and  romance,  the  singer's  duty  was  two- 
fold— to  serve  and  to  honour.  The  poetic 
fiction  of  a  love  relation  was  inevitably  sug- 
gested by  the  ordinary  language  of  feudal  de- 
votion. The  deep  gulf  that  separated  vassal 
from  lady  might  be  crossed  by  the  cry  of  a 
hopeless  and  respectful  love.  Very  often  the 
lady  is  reproached  for  her  pride;  she  will  not 
so  much  as  cast  the  glance  that  will  save  her 
servant  from  death.  Of  course,  the  reproach 
is  really  flattery;  it  means,  in  fact,  that  the  lady 
is  above  reproach.  The  usages  of  feudalism 
lent  themselves  excellently  to  erotic  purposes. 
The  vassal  kneels  before  his  lord,  lays  his 
folded  hands  in  those  of  his  lord,  kisses  his  feet, 
and  is  kissed  by  him  on  the  mouth.  In  the 
epics  the  kiss  is  often  momentous.  In  the 
Four  Sons  of  Aymon,  to  give  a  single  ex- 
ample, King  Eudo  kisses  his  vassal  Renaut  on 
receiving  him;  afterwards,  having  privily  be- 
trayed him,  he  dismisses  him  without  the  kiss, 
feigning  illness  to  excuse  the  omission.  It  is 
true  that  the  troubadour's  kiss  had  a  double 


148  THE  LADY 

parentage,  being  descended  on  one  side  from 
Ovid  and  the  May  song;  but  the  true  kiss  of 
courtesy  was  the  sacramental  and  mystic  sign  of 
love's  devout  allegiance.  An  axiom  of  feudal- 
ism declared,  "The  higher  the  lord  the  better  the 
vassal."  In  accordance  with  this  principle  the 
troubadour  was  able  to  celebrate  his  mistress's 
worldly  station  and  its  reflection  on  himself. 
There  was  nothing  in  the  relation  of  servant 
and  mistress  to  prevent  a  lady  from  retaining 
several  singers  at  once.  It  is  somewhat  more 
singular  that  the  singer  was  able  to  consecrate 
his  genius  to  more  than  one  lady  at  a  time.  He 
accomplished  this  logically  by  saying  to  each 
that  her  virtues  ennobled  her  whole  sex,  so  that 
all  ladies  were  revered  by  him. 

It  has  been  the  conviction  of  certain  critics 
that  the  minnesong  was  the  paean  of  lawless  love. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  where  lawless  love 
existed  the  conventions  of  courtesy  and  the 
minnesong  fitted  its  exigencies  to  perfection, 
and  we  shall  consider  it  later  in  connection  with 
the  romances  of  Chretien  de  Troyes.  But  the 
love  of  the  professional  troubadour  was  of- 
ficial. His  business  was  to  glorify  his  lady. 
It  was  his  song  that  she  wanted  and  rewarded, 
not  his  passion.  Personally,  he  was  probably 
of  no  great  importance  to  her.  This  is  what 
he  means  by  saying  that  timidity  prevents  him 


149 

from  declaring  his  love  otherwise  than  in  song. 
This  is  true  even  of  the  non-professional  trou- 
badour. The  great  lords  who  sang  to  ladies 
used  humble  language,  and  offered  the  most 
extreme  devotion  as  a  delicate  attention.  Often 
the  singer  felt  obliged  to  assure  the  world  that 
his  lady  was  cruel  and  his  wishes  unfulfilled. 
Particularly  in  Germany,  where  manners  were 
strict,  the  poet  took  care  not  to  be  misunder- 
stood. Only  thus  can  we  explain  the  fact  that 
a  literature  by  definition  "gay,"  explicitly  de- 
vised for  the  entertainment  of  a  light-hearted 
society,  should  be  filled  with  the  pain  of  dis- 
appointed love.  The  troubadour's  usual  state  of 
mind  is  desire.  He  often  declares  that  he 
would  rather  love  his  mistress  in  vain  than  win 
another  woman.  Often  he  speaks  of  his  love 
as  an  illusion: 

"Ich  diene  immer  auf  den  minnelichen  Wahn." 

The  ladies  of  all  singers  are  alike;  their 
beauty  is  described  by  formula;  out  of  thou- 
sands of  songs  not  one  lady  can  be  identified 
as  a  person;  there  is  a  typical  lady,  but  there 
are  no  individuals.  Every  singer  makes  the 
same  protestations  and  complaints.  It  is  his 
rhymes  that  he  is  thinking  of.  Every  singer 
declares  that  all  the  others  are  making  believe; 
he  alone  is  serious.  There  are  many  traces  of 


THE  LADY 

jealousy  of  the  amateur,  the  lordly  troubadour 
who  may  approach  the  lady  in  daily  life,  thus 
gaining  a  great  advantage  over  his  lowly  com- 
petitor, and  who  sings  for  nothing.  Generally 
the  lady  is  named  or  identified.  When  a  feigned 
name  is  used  it  has  the  air  of  being  as  well 
known  as  the  real  one.  It  is  unthinkable  that 
a  favoured  lover  should  thus  compromise  a 
great  lady.  Sometimes  a  song  was  addressed 
to  a  lady  and  her  husband,  to  a  lady  and  her 
brother,  to  a  lady  and  her  nephews!  It  is  not 
maintained  that  the  troubadour  never  felt  love, 
nor  is  it  likely  that  he  could  constantly  handle 
fire  without  a  scorch.  But  it  is  very  likely  that 
too  sincere  a  feeling  was  disadvantageous  to 
him.  Bernard  of  Ventadorn,  the  most  impas- 
sioned of  the  school,  has  frequent  occasion  to 
sing  a  song  of  parting.  Perhaps  the  most  for- 
tunate case  for  a  troubadour  was  that  he  should 
love,  for  the  sake  of  the  effect  on  his  talent,  but 
that  his  beloved  should  not  be  the  lady  to  whom 
his  songs  were  addressed.  The  precieuse  did 
not  wish  to  command  the  whirlwind.  Mezura 
(moderation)  was  one  of  the  qualities  required 
of  the  courteous  lover. 


I 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE    151 


F  minnesong  had  consisted  simply  of  the  ele- 
ments we  have  considered,  the  crude  sen- 
sualism of  the  May  song,  the  gallantry  of 
Ovid  and  the  compliments  of  a  court  singer,  it 
would  not  have  survived  to  have  a  lasting  effect 
on  the  literature  of  Europe.  But  a  man  did  not 
live  in  the  eleventh  century  or  the  twelfth  for 
nothing;  whether  he  were  clerk  or  layman  he 
submitted  to  the  feeling  of  the  time  that  the 
"eye  of  the  heart"  could  see  realities  that  the 
bodily  eye  would  never  find.  St.  Bernard  and 
Bernard  of  Ventadorn  were  at  one  on  this  point. 
The  thirtieth  rule  of  Andreas  Capellanus 
rested  on  it.  The  beautiful  word  minne  itself 
illustrates  the  history  of  the  idea.  The  earliest 
singers  of  Germany  do  not  use  it;  friuntschaft 
and  Hebe  are  their  words  for  love.  The  root- 
meaning  of  minnen  is  to  think  of.  Its  gradual 
prevalence  accompanies  the  transfer  of  sexual 
love  into  the  spiritual  life.  The  love  of  a  lady 
whom  the  lover  has  never  seen  occurs  in  ro- 
mantic literature  everywhere,  from  the  Arabian 
Nights  to  the  Nibelungen  Lied.  In  courteous 
love  it  became  classic. 

The  beautiful  legend  of  Jaufre  Rudel,  created 
to  explain  his  famous  songs  of  love  from  afar, 
and  used  by  Rostand  in  his  Princesse  Lointaine, 


152  THE  LADY 

bespeaks  its  importance:  "Now  Jaufre  Rudel 
of  Blaia  was  a  right  noble  prince  of  Blaia, 
and  it  chanced  that,  though  he  had  not  seen, 
he  loved  the  Countess  of  Tripoli  for  her 
great  excellence  and  virtue,  whereof  the  pil- 
grims who  came  from  Antioch  spread  abroad 
the  report.  And  he  made  of  her  fair  songs 
with  fair  melodies  and  with  short  verses,  till  he 
longed  so  greatly  to  see  her  that  he  took  the 
Cross  and  embarked  upon  the  sea  to  gain  sight 
of  her.  And  lo!  in  the  ship  there  fell  upon  him 
such  great  sickness  that  they  who  were  with 
him  weened  he  was  dead  therein ;  nathless  they 
brought  him  as  one  dead  to  a  hostelry  in  Tripoli. 
And  the  thing  was  made  known  to  the  Countess, 
so  that  she  came  unto  his  bedside  and  took  him 
into  her  arms.  Then  he  knew  that  it  was  she, 
and  sight  and  speech  returned  unto  him,  and 
he  gave  praise  and  thanks  unto  God  who  had 
preserved  his  life  until  his  seeing  her.  And  so 
he  died  in  the  arms  of  the  Countess,  and  she 
gave  him  honourable  burial  in  the  temple- 
house  of  Tripoli ;  and  on  that  selfsame  day  she 
gave  herself  to  God  and  became  a  nun,  for  loss 
of  him  and  grief  at  his  death." 

The  dream  was  a  glimpse  of  reality  in  the 
Middle  Age.  Monk  or  nun  dreamed  of  sal- 
vation, often  with  an  erotic  tinge.  Love  in  a 
dream  was  the  lover's  solace.  The  misery  of 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE    153 

waking  life  was  felt  alike  by  saint  and  by  lover. 
The  thought  of  death  was  familiar  and  not 
unwelcome  to  both.  Ovid  had  spoken  in  sheer 
rhetoric  of  dying  for  love;  the  mediaeval  lover 
was  ready  to  die  in  earnest.  The  love  of  a  dead 
lady  was  often  sung,  with  a  cast  forward  to 
Beatrice.  Tears  are  an  innovation  of  the 
courteous  lover.  They  are  shed  not  at  all  in 
Beowulf,  but  sparingly  in  the  Nibelungen 
Lied,  and  hardly  oftener  in  the  chansons  and 
early  epics.  But  St.  Bernard  and  the  trouba- 
dour weep  freely.  The  mystic,  whether  in  love 
or  in  religion,  was  subject  to  ecstasy.  The 
Lancelot  of  Chretien  de  Troyes  was  twice  in 
great  bodily  peril  because  the  sudden  sight  of  his 
lady  bereft  him  of  attention  to  the  rest  of  his  en- 
vironment. The  way  is  being  prepared  for 
Dante's  swoon  at  the  marriage  feast.  In  a 
word,  the  mysticism  of  the  troubadour,  passing 
into  Italy  and  there  modified,  was  adopted  by 
the  dolce  stil  nuovo  and  reached  its  climax  in 
the  work  of  the  great  poet  of  the  Middle  Age. 

A  very  different  history  awaited  it  in  the 
north.  At  the  court  of  Marie  de  Champagne, 
impregnated  with  the  ideas  of  courtesy,  lived 
Chretien  de  Troyes,  the  father  of  the  psycho- 
logical romance.  In  his  hands  the  laws  of  love 
were  worked  out  in  their  application  to  life. 

Gaston  Paris,  in  an  essay  of  incomparable  in- 


154  THE  LADY 

sight,  has  analysed  the  elements  that  go  to  the 
making  of  Chretien's  Conte  de  la  Charrette. 
This  romance  tells  how  Guinevere,  Arthur's 
queen,  was  carried  away  by  Meleguant,  a  dis- 
courteous lover,  and  rescued  by  Lancelot.  Ac- 
cording to  the  analysis  of  Paris,  the  germ  of  the 
story  is  an  ancient  Breton  legend  of  a  king's 
wife,  who  was  stolen  by  the  king  of  the  dead 
and  recovered  by  her  husband.  In  course  of 
time  the  queen  is  specified  as  the  wife  of  Arthur, 
and  Arthur  is  her  deliverer.  At  the  same  time, 
or  soon  after,  the  king  of  the  dead  loses  his 
mythological  character  and  becomes  Maelwas, 
King  of  Somerset;  but  traces  of  his  origin  cling 
to  him,  for  even  in  Chretien's  story  it  is  said 
that  from  his  country  no  traveller  returns,  and 
it  is  reached  by  marvellous  means.  At  this 
stage  the  Breton  story  passed  into  Anglo-Nor- 
man poetry,  and  for  Arthur  was  substituted 
Lancelot,  who  was,  however,  not  yet  the  lover  of 
Guinevere.  Chretien  had  before  him  this  An- 
glo-Norman version.  His  contribution  to  the 
story,  besides  a  number  of  adventurous  complica- 
tions of  a  somewhat  commonplace  character,  pre- 
sented for  the  first  time  in  literature  a  complete 
picture  of  the  knightly  lover.  In  the  earlier  ver- 
sions of  Lancelot's  story  he  delivered  Guinevere 
merely  in  performance  of  his  duty  as  a  brave 
knight.  Chretien  made  him  her  lover,  affect- 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE    155 

ing  by  this  stroke  not  only  the  fate  of  Paolo  and 
Francesca,  but  the  experience  of  the  reading 
public  from  that  day  to  this.  Lancelot's  life 
is  dominated  by  his  idee  fixe.  The  love  of  other 
women  is  repugnant  to  him.  No  sacrifice  is 
too  great  if  made  for  his  lady's  sake.  To  save 
her  he  incurs  every  imaginable  danger.  This, 
however,  is  routine  for  any  brave  knight;  the 
real  trial  comes  when,  in  order  to  find  her,  he 
is  obliged  to  ride  for  a  distance  on  a  cart,  an 
act  which,  for  reasons  not  explained,  had  some- 
thing shameful  in  it.  For  a  moment  he  hesi- 
tates to  incur  this  shame,  but  then  for  love's 
sake  accepts  it.  After  all  his  adventures  Guin- 
evere receives  him  coldly,  and  the  explanation 
embodies  all  the  subtlety  of  the  laws  of  love. 
Lancelot  believes  it  was  because  he  had  mounted 
upon  the  cart  and  incurred  shame.  Not  so;  it 
was  because  for  a  moment  he  had  hesitated  to  do 
so.  He  humbly  acknowledges  his  fault,  and  the 
penance  for  this  knight,  the  bravest  of  the  brave, 
is  to  let  himself  appear  a  coward.  His  love  is 
the  motive  of  his  life,  and  his  lady  is  the  judge 
of  all  his  actions.  When  he  is  standing  at  a 
castle  window  overlooking  the  plain  far  below 
he  sees  his  lady  pass,  and  would  throw  himself 
down  did  not  his  companion  restrain  him. 
Finding  on  his  toilsome  road  a  comb  with  some 
of  his  lady's  hairs  in  it,  this  strong  man  sinks 


156  THE  LADY 

nerveless  to  the  ground.  On  her  part  the  lady 
is  equally  ideal  as  an  exemplar  of  the  code. 
Her  courtesy  and  grace  are  unfailingly  exerted, 
on  foe  as  on  friend.  She  loves  Lancelot  as  he 
loves  her.  When  she  thinks  him  dead  she  be- 
gins to  starve  herself.  But  in  spite  of  her  pas- 
sion she  never  loses  sight  of  her  duty  as  a  source 
of  moral  uplift  to  her  lover.  When  he  finally 
wins  his  way  to  her  she  receives  him  with  sever- 
ity, reproaching  him  with  his  instant  of  hesi- 
tation and  fixing  his  heavy  fine.  But  when  this 
is  paid  he  receives  his  full  reward.  Neither  of 
the  lovers  has  a  moment  of  misgiving  or  remorse. 
Guinevere  is  Arthur's  wife,  and  Lancelot  is  his 
sworn  knight,  but  neither  gives  him  a  thought. 
As  Andreas  Capellanus  described  the  theory  of 
courteous  love,  so  does  Chretien  describe  its 
practice.  Its  essence  consists  in  standing  outside 
of  marriage.  The  lady's  favour  is  revocable 
at  any  time,  and  the  lover  stands  in  perpetual 
fear  of  losing  it.  She  governs  him  both  by  fear 
and  by  gratitude;  by  fear,  since  she  is  his  not 
for  life  but  for  good  behaviour;  by  gratitude, 
because  for  his  sake  she  runs  the  terrible  risk 
of  her  husband's  anger. 

The  lady  thus  achieved  for  herself  a  very 
strong  position.  To  be  worthy  of  her  the  lover 
accomplished  marvels  of  prowess,  and  she  was 
preoccupied  with  his  spiritual  progress.  Both 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  CASTLE    157 

admitted  that  their  love  was  an  art,  governed 
by  rules  and  precedents.  She  had  freed  her- 
self from  the  limitations  of  marriage,  but  from 
the  noblest  possible  motives.  The  tabu  was 
broken  in  the  interests  of  a  higher  morality. 
The  husband  was  placed  among  the  Philistines 
by  the  very  conditions  of  his  tenure;  he  could 
find  room  among  the  finer  spirits  only  by  qual- 
ifying as  a  lover  and  receiving  from  some  other 
woman  the  education  his  wife  was  dispensing 
to  another  man.  "Goodness  is  the  only  worthy 
crown  of  love,"  said  the  official  expositor. 
Love  as  known  to  Ovid  was  a  degradation;  to 
the  troubadour  it  was  a  means  of  grace. 
Courtesy  could  say  with  St.  Augustine,  Faciunt 
boni  amores  bonos  mores. 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE 

Et  encore  ai-je  une  opinion,  dit  Parlamente,  que  jamais  homme 
n'aimera  parfaitement  Dieu,  qu'il  n'ait  parfaitement  aime  quel- 
que  creature  en  ce  monde. — MARGARET,  QUEEN  OF  NAVARRE: 
The  Heptameron. 


IN  the  frescoes  with  which  Benozzo  Gozzoli 
in  the  fourteenth  century  adorned  the  walls 
of  the  Campo  Santo  in  Pisa  and  of  the 
church  of  San  Gimignano,  there  are  preserved 
for  us  the  portraits  of  a  type  of  house  which 
survives  nowhere  except  in  these  paintings,  and 
which  marks  a  great  social  change.  We  can 
trust  Gozzoli's  accuracy.  The  artists  of  his 
day  were  students  of  all  the  constructive  arts, 
and  as  ready  to  build  a  bridge  as  to  paint  a 
Madonna.  Their  backgrounds  sometimes  por- 
tray a  whole  city,  worked  out  with  the  care  of 
an  architect's  plan.  Wherever  we  are  able  to 
check  Gozzoli,  we  find  that  he  tells  the  literal 
truth  about  the  appearance  of  the  world  of  his 
day,  and  we  can  therefore  safely  make,  on  his 
authority,  certain  statements  about  the  dwellings 
of  the  well-to-do  in  Italy  in  his  century. 

158 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE      159 

The  traditions  of  Roman  architecture  had 
never  been  altogether  drowned  out  in  Italy  by 
the  Gothic;  and  the  discovery  at  the  end  of  the 
thirteenth  century  of  the  manuscript  of  Vitru- 
vius,  the  great  Roman  architect,  renewed  the 
authority  of  these  traditions.  The  Gothic  ideas 
were  soon  abandoned  and  left  their  mark  only 
in  the  shape  of  a  certain  eclecticism  and  liberty 
of  fancy  which  prevented  the  slavish  repro- 
duction of  the  antique.  For  although  the 
houses  of  Gozzoli  are  far  nearer  to  the  Roman 
villa  than  to  the  Gothic  donjon,  they  have 
nevertheless  a  radical  difference.  The  Roman 
house,  like  the  Greek  house,  presented  as  nearly 
as  possible  a  blank  wall  to  the  world.  Within 
there  was  space,  air  and  light,  but  no  one  could 
guess  it  from  without.  The  early  Italian  house 
on  the  other  hand  is  open  and  accessible.  The 
people  who  live  in  it  wish  to  see  and  are 
willing  to  be  seen.  Contrasting  the  house 
with  the  donjon  we  can  see  that  life  has  become 
relatively  safe  and  peaceful;  contrasting  it 
with  the  Roman  house  we  can  see  that  life  has 
become  democratic  and  simple.  In  a  word,  it 
has  become  modern.  The  loggia  has  appeared 
with  all  its  social  connotation.  It  may  occur 
on  the  ground  floor,  on  the  first  floor  or  on  the 
roof;  it  may  be  covered  with  trellised  vines  or 
with  a  roof,  and  sometimes  another  story  rests 


160  THE  LADY 

upon  it.  The  balcony  is  there  with  no  roof 
at  all.  The  roof  of  the  house  is  covered  with 
tiles  or  lead  and  serves  as  a  terrace.  Sometimes 
vines  and  shrubs  are  planted  there.  The  houses 
are  entered  by  gracious  porticos,  inviting  the 
guest  instead  of  forbidding  him.  Doors  and 
windows  open  freely  on  the  ground  floor  as  on 
all  the  others.  In  one  instance  the  main 
entrance  of  a  modest  little  house  is  guarded  by 
a  curtain  only.  The  charming  verandah  on 
which  the  good  Gozzoli  has  displayed  the 
drunkenness  of  Noah  has  many  of  the  char- 
acteristics of  the  democratised  classical  forms 
that  we  Americans  call  "colonial."  These 
dignified  yet  highly  ornamented  exteriors  lend 
themselves  readily  to  the  requirements  of  pop- 
ular and  civic  gaiety;  carpets  and  draperies  and 
garlands  fall  naturally  into  their  lines.  The 
spirit  of  them  was  not  confined  to  the  luxurious 
house  of  the  wealthy  citizen,  but  entered  into 
the  palaces  of  the  Renaissance  in  Italy.  In 
France  the  day  of  the  donjon  passed.  Either 
the  castellan  added  extraneous  buildings  in 
which  everyday  life  was  carried  on,  retaining 
the  keep  for  emergencies  only;  or  he  abandoned 
the  keep  altogether  and  built  for  himself  the 
beautiful  Renaissance  chateau  with  a  semblance 
of  fortification  but  primarily  a  house  to  live  in. 
Visitors  to  Chenonceaux  remember  the  isolated 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE       161 

tower  standing  at  the  left  of  the  chateau  and 
a  little  in  advance  of  it.  This  is  the  surviving 
donjon  of  Pierre  de  Marques,  ancient  lord  of 
the  manor.  But  door,  gable  and  windows  were 
added  by  Thomas  Bohier,  Baron  de  Saint 
Ciergue,  who  acquired  the  property  under 
Francis  the  First.  Bohier's  building  is  living 
proof  that  the  function  of  a  man's  house  was 
changed;  it  was  no  longer  constructed  primar- 
ily for  the  repulse  of  his  enemies  but  for  the 
reception  of  his  friends.  The  donjon  has  be- 
come positively  gay  in  appearance,  and  it  gives 
an  object-lesson  of  the  ingenuity  employed  in 
supplying  it  with  what  it  chiefly  lacked  as  a 
human  habitation — windows,  namely — without 
weakening  the  walls.  The  architect  boldly  cut 
out  a  section  of  the  solid  masonry  from  top  to 
bottom,  and  replaced  it  with  pilastered  win- 
dows, strongly  mullioned,  the  upper  supported 
by  the  lower.  Nothing  could  be  more  charm- 
ing in  effect.  The  donjon  proverbially  frowns, 
but  that  of  Chenonceaux  is  made  to  smile.  The 
main  body  of  the  chateau,  built  from  the  be- 
ginning by  Bohier,  preserves,  to  save  its  face, 
some  signs  of  the  Gothic  and  military  origin  of 
its  type;  but  the  turrets  have  lost  their  machico- 
lation, a  very  modern  improvement  in  its  day 
to  facilitate  the  pouring  of  molten  lead  on  the 
heads  of  besiegers.  A  peaceful  cornice  has 


162  THE  LADY 

taken  its  place.  The  salle  d'armes  has  become 
a  drawing-room;  the  lady  has  a  boudoir;  the 
loop-hole  has  become  the  most  beautiful  of  win- 
dows; and  the  dark  and  difficult  staircase  has 
become  a  stately  construction. 

The  Italian  palace  made  haste  to  profit  by 
times  of  peace,  and  even  to  take  chances  in 
time  of  war,  by  venturing  out  from  the  city- 
walls  and  becoming  a  villa.  So  thoroughly  was 
the  open  air  recognised  as  the  first  luxury  of 
life,  that  the  garden  was  regarded  as  an  integral 
part  of  the  house.  And  if  the  house  was 
Roman,  far  more  so  was  the  garden.  Climate 
naturally  had  here  a  determining  voice.  In 
relation  to  his  garden  the  fifteenth  century 
Italian  had  much  more  in  common  with  the 
ancient  Roman  than  with  the  Englishman  or 
even  the  Frenchman  of  his  own  day.  In  Italy 
the  difference  between  indoors  and  out  is  con- 
ventional, in  more  northern  countries  it  is 
essential.  The  Frenchman  and  the  English- 
man learned  in  time  to  consider  house  and  gar- 
den in  relation  to  each  other  but  they  never 
lost  sight  of  the  fact  that  they  are  different 
things.  In  Italy  the  inf  requence  of  the  chimney 
withindoors  and  the  conformation  of  the  garden 
without  tell  the  same  story  of  the  kindliness  of 
nature.  The  builder  of  the  Renaissance  therefore 
planned  his  garden  as  nearly  as  possible  in  the 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE      163 

spirit  in  which  the  imperial  Roman  had  planned 
his.  Neither  of  them  approached  it  in  the 
spirit  of  the  Englishman  who  aims  at  an 
imitation  of  nature.  With  the  somewhat  hard 
logic  characteristic  of  the  aesthetic  of  both,  the 
imperial  Roman  and  the  Italian  of  the 
Renaissance  agreed  that  nature  cannot  be  im- 
itated. She  can  however  be  subdued  and  made 
amenable  to  art,  for  which  her  tissues  and  proc- 
esses make  one  of  the  most  beautiful  of 
mediums.  It  is  not  necessary  to  describe  here 
the  varied  beauties  of  the  Italian  villa,  or  to 
recall  its  effects  on  the  ideas  and  practices  of 
other  lands.  Its  charming  forms  will  recur  of 
themselves  to  anyone  who  has  seen  the  Villa 
Madama,  the  Villa  d'Este,  the  Villa  Lante,  the 
Villa  Aldobrandini.  Their  intrinsic  beauty  is 
not  our  theme,  but  their  bearing  on  the  status 
of  the  lady.  Their  general  social  import  has 
already  been  hinted;  their  very  existence  im- 
plied an  established  order,  a  leisure  class,  the 
opportunity  and  the  will  to  make  the  most  of 
life.  It  is  when  such  conditions  prevail  that 
the  lady  blooms.  In  time  of  stress  she  is  classed 
with  the  impedimenta.  When  men  are  in  the 
saddle,  their  women  are  put  away  with  the 
other  treasures  and  household  gear,  to  be  fought 
for  to  the  death  but  hardly  to  be  enjoyed  or  dis- 
played to  admiring  friends.  But  if  the  lady 


164  THE  LADY 

had  acquired  some  dust  and  cobwebs  during 
the  fighting  times  of  the  middle  age,  her  period 
of  renovation  was  at  hand.  Not  only  had  the 
men  of  the  Renaissance  time  to  get  out  their 
works  of  art,  but  they  had  the  taste  for  them. 
They  might  quite  easily,  as  far  as  one  can  see, 
have  taken  to  commerce  or  to  drink,  but  as  a 
matter  of  fact  they  took  to  visible  beauty.  The 
lady  became  indispensable  for  her  decorative 
value.  She  was  treated,  it  is  true,  very  much 
as  inanimate  nature  was  treated;  that  is,  she 
was  transformed  into  a  work  of  art.  She  had 
her  inevitable  place  in  the  pageant  of  life,  as 
in  some  splendid  arrangement  of  society  by 
Veronese.  Her  limits  were  set  not  so  much 
by  economic  conditions  or  by  the  egotism  of 
man  as  by  the  collective  aesthetic  sense.  We 
may  say  that  in  the  general  collapse  of  insti- 
tutionalism  and  authority  which  astonished  the 
fifteenth  century,  the  only  positive  demand 
made  of  the  lady  was  that  she  should  be  beauti- 
ful. This  might  seem  at  first  sight  the  harshest 
of  all  demands,  but  it  should  be  added  at  once 
that  to  the  almost  superhumanly  intelligent 
eye  of  that  age  there  were  very  nearly  as  many 
ways  of  being  beautiful  as  there  were  ladies. 
Oddly  enough  it  is  the  periods  without  an  eye, 
like  our  own,  and  the  periods  when  the  eye  is 
subject  to  limitations,  like  the  middle  age,  that 


Lodovico  Sforza,  Beatrice  d'Este  and  their  sons  kneeling  before 

the  Virgin. 

From  a  painting  of  the  Lombard  school  in  the  Pinacoteca  del  Brera,  Milan. 

See  p.  170 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE       165 

are  difficult  in  the  matter  of  the  lady's  ap- 
pearance. At  such  times  there  are  only  two  or 
three  ways  of  being  beautiful,  and  to  one  of 
these  the  lady  must  conform  or  be  missed  al- 
together. Like  any  other  object  of  art  she 
must  belong  to  an  easily  recognised  group ;  and 
this  principle  the  dealers  understand  very  well, 
turning  out  the  required  article  with  amazing 
uniformity,  so  that  a  word  from  Burne-Jones 
or  Mr.  Gibson  determines  the  physical  char- 
acters of  many  seasons  of  debutantes.  The 
great  gift  of  the  men  of  the  Renaissance,  inex- 
plicable and  paid  for  by  limitations  in  some 
other  directions,  was  an  unusually  widely 
diffused  power  to  judge  of  visible  beauty.  At 
first  thought  we  might  feel  that  the  great  col- 
lector of  the  Renaissance  was  the  same  person 
as  the  great  collector  of  our  own  day.  A 
second  thought  reveals  the  gulf  between  them. 
The  Renaissance  collector  used  his  own  judg- 
ment, and  it  was  based  on  the  aesthetic  merit 
of  the  object.  The  collector  of  our  day  uses  in 
general  the  judgment  of  some  one  else, — of 
some  individual  or  of  society  at  large.  And  if 
he  does  choose  for  himself,  his  choice  is  based 
on  the  same  shrewd  commercial  instinct  for  a 
"good  thing"  which,  employed  in  other 
fields,  is  the  cause  of  his  being  in  a  position  to 
buy  objects  of  art  at  all.  Collectors  of  this 


1 66  THE  LADY 

sort  are  generally  most  interested  in  the  old,  for 
it  requires  a  different  equipment  to  judge  the 
new.  The  Renaissance  could  not,  it  is  true,  get 
enough  of  the  old,  but  no  age  since  that  of  the 
Greeks  has  so  intrepidly  encouraged  the  new. 
This  freedom  of  judgment  was  favourable  to 
the  lady,  who  generally  remains  a  dogma  even 
in  ages  that  have  surrendered  all  others. 

If  the  collector  was  propitious  to  the  lady 
in  his  appreciation  and  anxious  to  make  the 
most  of  her,  the  artist  was  also,  as  he  always  is, 
her  natural  ally.  The  feminine  strand  often 
recognised  in  the  artist's  psychology  seems  to 
be  the  natural  result  of  the  fact  that  he  alone 
of  men  has  some  share  in  the  determining  ex- 
perience of  a  woman's  life, — maternity.  His 
nerves  like  hers  are  played  upon  by  the  long 
unintermittent  drain  of  gestation  and  by  the  bit- 
ter-sweet anguish  of  production.  He  knows 
what  it  is  to  feel  his  vitality,  his  will-power,  .the 
very  food  he  eats,  go  to  the  benefit  of  some- 
thing not  himself,  something  to  which  he  is 
sacrificed.  His  famous  temperament  repre- 
sents his  vague  consciousness  of  how  important 
it  is  to  society  that  all  should  go  well  with  him. 
And  when  the  child  or  the  work  of  art  is  finally 
born,  the  father  and  the  collector,  for  all  their 
enthusiasm,  are  in  one  class;  the  artist  and  the 
mother  are  in  another,  for  they  agree  in  valuing 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE      167 

the  product  not  only  for  what  it  is  worth,  or 
from  a  sense  of  proprietorship,  but  for  what  it 
has  cost. 

Like  the  tree  in  the  garden,  the  lady  had  often 
to  undergo  a  certain  amount  of  modification 
before  she  was  felt  to  be  in  harmony  with  the 
rest  of  the  composition.  Two  direct  inherit- 
ances from  imperial  Rome  were  the  art  of  the 
topiarius,  who  could  make  a  shrub  into  a  pea- 
cock, and  the  transformation  of  the  darkest 
hair  to  golden  red.  The  famous  recipe  of  the 
Countess  Nani,  to  produce  the  shade  called 
filo  d'oro,  required  two  pounds  of  alum,  six 
ounces  of  black  sulphur  and  four  ounces  of 
honey,  the  whole  to  be  diluted  with  water. 
Titian's  cousin,  Cesare  Vecellio,  tells  us  how 
the  preparation  was  applied.  The  lady,  having 
thoroughly  anointed  her  hair,  established  her- 
self on  some  retired  terrace  open  to  the  sun,  and 
set  upon  her  head  the  brim  of  a  great  hat  with 
no  crown.  Through  the  central  opening  she 
drew  her  hair  and  spread  it  on  the  expansive 
brim,  thus  exposing  her  locks  to  the  sunlight  and 
at  the  same  time  preserving  her  complexion. 
For  hours  she  sat  and  sunned  herself  until  the 
lotion  was  dry  and  the  colour  fixed,  patiently 
preparing  herself  to  become  a  congenial  subject 
for  Titian's  pallette. 

In  the  course  of  the   Renaissance  the  lady 


168  THE  LADY 

developed  a  waist.  In  the  middle  age  her 
garments  had  been  all  of  a  piece,  sometimes 
girdled  more  or  less  closely,  but  characterised 
by  long  lines  from  shoulder  to  toe.  Her  lament- 
able modern  conception  of  herself  as  con- 
sisting of  two  parts,  an  upper  and  a  lower, 
susceptible  of  different  architectural  treatment, 
dates  most  unexpectedly  from  an  age  of  beauty. 
Gentile  Bellini's  kneeling  Venetian  lady 
(blonde  of  course)  has  cut  off  her  tight-fitting 
bodice  at  the  waist  and  sewn  her  skirt  to  it. 
Bernardo  Zenale's  equally  blonde  lady  has  done 
the  same  thing.  The  next  step  was  to  make 
bodice  and  skirt  of  different  colours,  and  the 
lady  was  sawn  asunder,  with  as  happy  effect  as 
if  a  Doric  column  were  to  be  painted  two-thirds 
red  and  one-third  yellow. 

The  mechanical  difficulty  of  adjusting  a 
tight  bodice  to  the  curves  of  the  human  body 
was  met  at  an  early  date  by  the  application 
down  the  middle  line  in  front  of  a  strip  of 
some  unyielding  substance.  This  object  was 
often  exposed  to  view,  when  it  was  made  of 
ivory  or  silver  or  mother-of-pearl,  and  richly 
ornamented.  Sometimes  it  bore  a  charming 
inscription.  On  one  that  was  worn  by  Anne  of 
Austria  is  engraved  a  posy  beginning  thus: 
"Ma  place  ordinaire  merit  est  sur  le  coeur  de  ma 
maitresse."  Thus  gaily  was  ushered  into  the 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE       169 

lady's  life  one  of  the  most  sinister  phenomena 
in  her  history,  the  corset.  The  crime  of  estab- 
lishing this  instrument  in  its  complete  form  is 
attributed — with  so  many  lesser  ones — to  Cath- 
erine de'  Medici.  It  was  at  any  rate  in  full 
bloom  under  the  later  Valois.  Montaigne  has 
recorded  his  impression  of  it  as  he  met  it  in 
society:  "Pour  faire  un  corps  bien  espagnole 
quelle  gehenne  les  femmes  ne  souffrent-elles  pasf 
guindees  et  sanglees  avec  de  grosses  coches  sur 
les  costes,  jusques  a  la  chair  vive?  Oui,  quel- 
quefois  a  en  mourir."  And  Ambrose  Pare,  who 
inspected  its  results  on  the  dissecting  table,  re- 
marked with  interest  in  such  fine  ladies  as  came 
his  way  "leur  costes  chevauchant  les  unes  par- 
dessus  les  autres" 

The  effect  of  the  tapering  waist  within  the 
corset  was  reenforced  by  the  expansion  below 
the  waist  of  the  remarkable  structure  known  as 
the  farthingale,  having  the  "bell-skirt"  as  a 
variant.  With  the  distention  of  her  lower  sec- 

A 

tion  the  lady  lost  practically  all  resemblance 
to  a  human  being.  The  graceful  female  body, 
which  had  reminded  so  many  poets  of  a  slender 
amphora,  took  on  the  contour  of  the  water-bot- 
tle. From  the  time  of  Francis  the  First  to  that 
of  Queen  Elizabeth  the  farthingale  swelled  un- 
checked. Ladies  so  different  in  temperament 
as  Madame  de  Maintenon  and  Queen  Victoria 


170  THE  LADY 

witnessed  its  vigorous  revival.  If  we  can  de- 
termine from  its  career  thus  far  the  law  that 
governs  its  appearance,  we  must  say  that  it 
coincides  with  times  that  we  call  great.  An- 
tecedently improbable,  it  is  nevertheless  true 
that  the  ugliest,  most  meaningless  and  most 
fantastic  dress  ever  donned  by  woman  in  Europe 
has  prevailed  in  the  great  Minoan  period  of  the 
Mediterranean  civilisation,  in  the  Renaissance, 
in  the  Elizabethan  period,  in  the  France  that 
prepared  the  Revolution,  in  the  England  of  the 
mid- Victorian  giants  and  in  the  United  States 
of  the  War  for  the  Union. 

If  the  lady's  colouring  and  shape  were 
treated  with  a  somewhat  high  hand  in  the  six- 
teenth century,  there  was  an  alarming  increase 
in  the  means  put  at  her  disposal  to  make  an 
artificial  appeal  to  another  sense  than  sight. 
The  cleanliness  of  the  middle-age  had  begun  to 
decay.  The  sanitation  of  the  new  chateau  was 
inferior  to  that  of  the  Gothic  donjon  or  abbey. 
Personal  habits  became  astonishingly  careless. 
As  might  have  been  expected,  the  art  of  the 
perfumer  was  in  great  demand.  The  lady  of 
the  time  of  Francis  the  First  might  be  fragrant 
of  violet  powder,  of  Chypres,  civet,  musk,  am- 
bergris, orange-flowers,  roses.  She  perfumed 
her  gloves,  her  collars,  her  lace  ruffles.  Any- 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE      171 

thing  that  she  could  do  for  society  she  did,  short 
of  the  desperate  step  of  the  frequent  bath. 

Some  of  the  minor  details  of  her  costume  be- 
gan to  be  strikingly  modern.  Watches  were 
known  early  in  the  sixteenth  century,  under  the 
name  of  "Nuremberg  eggs."  Under  Henry 
the  Second  the  egg  became  relatively  flat  and 
could  be  viewed  in  the  light  of  an  ornament. 
It  brought  the  pocket  in  its  wake,  but  for  men 
only.  Catherine  de  Medici  is  credited  by 
Brantome  with  another  innovation  more  benefi- 
cent than  the  corset.  She  was,  says  he,  "la 
premiere  qui  ait  mis  la  jambe  dans  I'arqon,  d'au- 
tant  que  la  grace  y  estoit  plus  belle  et  appar- 
oissante  que  sur  la  planchette."  The  planchette 
was  the  support  slung  at  the  right  side  of  the 
horse  or  mule  throughout  the  middle  age,  when 
the  lady  sat  in  her  saddle  as  in  a  chair  and  made 
no  pretension  to  control  her  mount.  Of  course 
many  a  lady  was  a  true  horsewoman  in  the  olden 
time,  but  then  apparently  she  rode  astride  and 
was  somewhat  exceptional;  the  adoption  of  the 
stirrup  made  her  the  rule. 

The  typical  lady  of  the  Renaissance  was  then 
in  appearance  formalised,  bedevilled  and  be- 
disened,  an  apparition  of  somewhat  stiffened 
splendour,  a  person  in  a  pageant.  Even  in  art 
she  retains  this  character.  Beatrice  d'Este  and 


172  THE  LADY 

the  Madonna  at  whose  feet  she  kneels  may 
serve  as  types  of  the  new  and  the  old;  but 
sometimes,  as  in  the  painting  known  as  "La 
Belle  Jardiniere,"  the  Madonna  herself  comes 
very  close  to  stays.  The  lady's  real  status  in 
this  wonderful  time  was  that  of  an  object  of  art, 
and  this  is  perhaps  her  most  logical  aspect  at 
any  time.  It  was  certainly  the  most  fortunate 
aspect  under  which  she  could  be  considered  in 
that  age,  for  the  Renaissance  knew  not  romance 
and  the  sentimental  lady,  who  might  so  easily 
have  been  the  next  step  after  courteous  love,  did 
wisely  to  postpone  her  appearance  until  the 
strongly  Latin  impulse  of  the  Revival  had 
worked  itself  out.  Like  every  other  object  of 
art,  she  was  of  course  assigned  her  place  in  the 
theories  of  art  in  general  with  which  the  time 
abounded.  Life  itself  was  an  art,  for  that  mat- 
ter, and  the  theory  of  it  sprang  from  one  gen- 
eralisation to  another  with  a  somewhat  dry 
Latin  lucidity,  as  if  the  whole  field  of  human 
experience  had  been  laid  out  by  Bramante. 
There  were  taken  up  into  this  symmetrical  con- 
ception of  life  a  number  of  ideas  which  were 
already  familiar,  and  others  which  though  not 
new  were  so  clipped  and  trimmed  and  combined 
that  their  originators  would  not  have  recognised 
them.  One  theme  which  appears  in  a  variety  of 
formSj  all  bearing  more  or  less  directly  on  the 


La  Belle  Jardiniere. 
From   the   painting  by   Raphael,   in   the   Louvre. 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE       173 

place  of  the  lady  in  the  composition,  is  the  so- 
called  "Platonism"  of  the  Renaissance. 

It  is  an  ancient  saying  that  every  human  being 
is  born  either  a  Platonist  or  an  Aristotelian, 
though  he  may  spend  his  life  without  becoming 
conscious  of  an  offensive  partisanship.  At  the 
time  when  the  ideas  were  being  formed  that 
were  to  obsess  the  mind  of  mediaeval  Europe, 
the  Platonic  tendency  as  embodied  in  neo- 
Platonism  was  the  prevailing  one.  Of  the 
teaching  of  the  neo-Platonists  it  may  be  said 
that  they  bore  about  the  same  relation  to  the 
words  of  Plato  as  the  teachings  of  the  early 
church  bore  to  the  words  of  Christ.  Plotinus 
was  almost  as  overwhelming  a  disciple  as  St. 
Paul.  Each  handed  on  in  the  name  of  the 
master  a  body  of  doctrine  which  the  master 
would  hardly  have  recognised.  And,  to 
make  a  very  summary  statement  of  a  highly 
complicated  matter,  St.  Augustine,  taking  his 
Platonism  from  Plotinus  and  his  Christianity 
from  St.  Paul,  gave  currency  to  a  system  which, 
while  showing  at  every  turn  the  handiwork  of 
Christ  and  of  Plato,  would  certainly  have  sur- 
prised them  both.  The  chief  element  foisted 
upon  Plato  by  neo-Platonism  was  mysticism. 
Plato,  though  an  enthusiast,  kept  his  feet  on 
the  ground;  but  his  enthusiasm  was  too  much 
for  weaker  heads.  To  adapt  the  phrase  of 


174  THE  LADY 

Lady  Macbeth,  that  which  made  him  bold  hath 
made  them  drunk.  The  ecstatic  and  the  mar- 
vellous gat  hold  upon  them  and  were  highly 
congenial  to  the  supernaturalism  of  the  early 
church.  The  master's  disparagement  of  the 
becoming  as  contrasted  with  the  eternal  became 
saturated  the  thought  of  the  fathers,  and  his 
view  of  life,  with  a  thousand  crude  appli- 
cations, was  a  determining  element  in  the 
asceticism.  Thus  modified  the  ideas  of  Plato 
Weltanschauung  of  the  middle  age.  At  first 
hand  his  doctrines  were  not  known  at  all;  the 
Latin  translation  of  the  Timaeus  by  Chalcidius 
constituted  for  centuries  the  whole  Platonic 
literature.  And  with  the  lapse  of  time  the 
church  went  over  to  Aristotle.  It  is  one  of  the 
ironies  of  history  that  when  the  true  Plato,  who 
had  lent  so  formative  a  hand  to  Christianity,  re- 
turned to  Europe,  he  found  Aristotle  in  pos- 
session of  the  field.  He  was  just  two  hundred 
and  fifty  years  too  late.  Nevertheless  the  un- 
conscious Platonism  of  the  middle  age  was  ir- 
repressible, and  in  one  of  its  manifestations,  run- 
ning over  into  the  Renaissance,  it  affected  the 
lady  nearly. 

In  a  famous  passage  in  the  Symposium 
Socrates  repeats  what  he  professes  to  have  heard 
from  Diotima,  the  wise  woman  of  Mantinea,  on 
the  subject  of  the  higher  mysteries  of  love: 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE       175 

"He  who  would  approach  this  matter  rightly 
must  begin  while  he  is  young  to  frequent  fair 
forms,  and  first,  if  his  guide  lead  him  aright, 
he  must  love  one  only  of  these  forms  and 
create  thence  fair  discourse.  Next  he  will 
notice  that  the  beauty  of  any  one  form  is  akin 
to  that  of  any  other,  and  if  the  object  of  his 
search  is  bodily  beauty,  it  would  be  folly  not 
to  recognise  that  the  beauty  of  all  bodies  is  one 
and  the  same.  When  he  has  arrived  at  this 
knowledge  he  will  constitute  himself  the  lover 
of  all  fair  forms,  despising  as  a  petty  thing  his 
old  vehement  love  for  one.  At  the  next  stage 
he  will  hold  that  beauty  in  the  soul  is  more 
honourable  than  beauty  in  the  flesh,  so  that  if  a 
virtuous  soul  have  but  a  little  bloom,  it  will 
satisfy  the  lover  to  love  and  to  tend  him  and  to 
produce  from  him  fair  discourse,  seeking  such 
as  will  improve  the  young,  until  he  is  driven  to 
take  another  step  and  behold  the  beauty  of  in- 
stitutions and  laws,  and  to  realise  that  it  is  all 
akin  and  that  bodily  beauty  is  a  very  small  mat- 
ter. From  the  laws  he  will  go  to  the  sciences 
and  seeing  there  beauty  on  the  great  scale  he  will 
no  longer  be  enslaved  by  the  beauty  of  the  in- 
dividual; but  he  will  stand  on  the  shore  of  the 
great  sea  of  beauty  and  as  he  gazes  he  will  be- 
come the  father  of  many  noble  words  and 
thoughts  in  his  boundless  love  of  wisdom.  And 


176  THE  LADY 

finally,  growing  great  and  strong  upon  that 
shore,  he  will  have  a  vision  of  a  single  science, 
which  is  the  science  of  true  beauty. 

"Now  try,  if  you  please,  to  give  me  your  very 
best  attention.  He  whose  education  in  love  has 
been  brought  to  this  point,  who  beholds  the 
beautiful  in  orderly  succession,  is  now  reaching 
the  end  and  suddenly,  Socrates,  there  will  be  re- 
vealed to  him  that  wondrous  beauty  which  has 
been  the  goal  of  all  his  efforts, — beauty  which 
never  begins  nor  ends,  nor  waxes  nor  wanes ;  not 
beauty  which  at  any  time  or  place  or  in  any 
relation  ceases  to  be  beautiful,  but  which  at  all 
times  and  in  all  places  and  in  all  relations  is 
fair;  not  beauty  presenting  itself  under  a  masque 
as  in  a  face  or  in  hands  or  in  speech  or  in 
science  or  in  any  other  form;  but  beauty  ab- 
solute, single,  eternal.  All  other  beautiful 
things  share  in  some  way  this  beauty,  but  while 
they  are  born  and  perish,  true  beauty  grows 
neither  greater  nor  less  nor  suffers  any  change. 

"So  when  anyone  by  loving  rightly  rises  from 
beautiful  things  and  begins  to  perceive  true 
beauty  he  will  soon  achieve  his  end.  For  the 
true  progress  of  love  is  this,  to  begin  with  beauti- 
ful things  and  advance  from  them  continually 
toward  beauty  itself,  using  them  as  rungs  of  the 
ladder,  going  from  one  fair  form  to  two  and 
from  two  to  all,  from  fair  forms  to  fair 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE      177 

practices,  thence  to  fair  learning,  and  finally  to 
that  one  science  which  is  the  knowledge  of 
nothing  but  beauty  itself.  That  is  the  life,  my 
dear  Socrates,  if  any  there  be,  that  a  man  should 
live,  contemplating  absolute  beauty.  You  and 
many  other  men  are  enraptured  by  the  sight  of 
gold  and  raiment  and  beautiful  boys  and  youths; 
you  would  go  without  meat  and  drink  if  you 
could  and  give  all  your  time  to  gazing  at  them 
and  enjoying  their  presence.  But  if  once  you 
were  to  see  pure  beauty  you  would  not  classify 
it  with  these  things.  What  if  it  befell  a  man 
to  behold  it,  simple,  pure,  unmixed,  not  choked 
with  human  flesh  and  blood  and  all  the  vanity  of 
human  life,  but  lonely  and  divine?  Do  you 
realise  that  there  alone  with  it,  beholding  it^vith 
the  eye  of  the  mind,  he  will  bring  forth  not 
vain  images  of  virtue  but  virtue  itself;  and  that 
a  man  who  brings  forth  and  cherishes  true  virtue 
is  the  friend  of  God  and  has  eternal  life?" 

The  discourse  of  Diotima  in  Plato's  Sym- 
posium is  easily  recognised  by  those  familiar 
with  Plato's  thought  and  style  as  highly  char- 
acteristic of  both.  By  the  pretext  of  quoting 
the  words  of  another,  Socrates  escapes  from  his 
ordinary  colloquial  dialectic  and  delivers  a 
highly  poetic  oration.  But  his  poetry  is 
founded  on  a  solid  basis  of  logic.  His  theory 
of  love  is  in  rigorous  agreement  with  his  gen- 


178  THE  LADY 

eral  doctrines  both  of  the  nature  of  things  and 
of  human  knowledge.  And  while  he  con- 
trives to  fill  with  emotion  what  is  at  bottom  a 
scientific  statement,  he  so  manages  that  neither 
his  science  nor  his  emotion  is  dogmatic  save  in 
form ;  the  reader  has  leave  to  think  for  himself, 
to  make  a  dozen  inferences  and  applications, 
and  to  quarrel  freely  with  the  next  reader  over 
the  author's  meaning.  Anyone  who  seizes  the 
general  drift  of  the  passage  will  realise  how 
much  unconscious  Platonism  there  was  in  the 
doctrine  of  courtesy,  with  its  fundamental  con- 
ception of  the  betterment  of  the  lover  by  his 
love.  Love  is  the  source  of  all  good,  love  is 
service,  love  kills  pride,  love  dwells  only  in  a 
cor  gentil,  love  is  an  art, — all  these  maxims  of 
courtesy  can  be  found  in  pretty  much  the  same 
words  in  one  or  another  of  the  Platonic  dia- 
logues. As  the  theory  rises  in  the  hands  of  the 
Italians  to  its  climax  in  Dante,  it  states  ever 
more  clearly  that  mortal  beauty  is  a  hint  of  God, 
and  of  God's  vicegerent,  philosophy.  "I  say 
and  affirm,"  declares  Dante,  "that  the  lady  by 
whom  I  am  inspired  with  the  highest  love  was 
the  beautiful  and  honourable  daughter  of  that 
governor  of  the  world,  to  which  Pythagoras 
gave  the  name  of  Philosophy."  Beatrice  is 
conscious  of  her  function  as  representative  of  the 
highest  good,  for  she  says  to  herself: 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE       179 

"I  miei  disire, 

Che  ti  menavano  ad  amar  lo  bene, 
Di  la  dal  qual  non  e  a  che  si  aspiri." 

Thus  in  the  height  of  the  Aristotelian  middle 
age,  its  greatest  poet  lifted  up  the  Platonic 
torch,  kindled  heaven  knows  whence, — from 
Cicero,  from  Boethius,  from  Chalcidius — and 
burning  with  a  strange  flame  that  betrayed  the 
presence  of  much  alloy  in  the  fuel.  But  there 
it  was,  a  fresh  expression  of  an  old  thought  in 
terms  of  a  new  view  of  life,  bearing  witness  to 
the  soundness  of  the  psychology  which  went  so 
deep  into  the  human  mind  as  to  find  there  a  law 
equally  operative  in  Athenian  and  medievalist. 
When  Plato  really  came  back  to  Europe  the 
cultivated  world  was  eager  to  receive  him;  the 
tradition  was  all  aglow.  But,  immense  as  was 
the  advantage  to  posterity  of  his  warm  reception, 
it  had  its  drawback.  The  scholars  of  the 
Renaissance  were  too  full  of  their  preconceived 
notion  of  the  master  to  receive  his  words  on 
their  own  merits.  The  fifteenth  and  the  six- 
teenth centuries  that  talked  so  much  of  Plato 
had  the  queerest  ideas  about  him.  They  read 
their  own  thoughts  into  his.  They  were  after 
all  Latins  and  they  might  have  said  with  Cotta 
(as  reported  by  Anatole  France)  "J'aime  beau- 
coup  le  philosophic  et  je  I'etudie  a  mes  heures 
de  loisir.  Mais  je  ne  la  comprends  bien  que 


i8o  THE  LADY 

dans  les  livres  de  Ciceron"  Plato's  theory  of 
beauty  was  a  godsend  to  a  generation  whose 
lives  were  governed  by  it, — of  whom  it  was  as 
true  as  it  had  been  of  the  men  of  Hellas  that 
"you  would  go  without  meat  and  drink  if  you 
could  and  give  all  your  time  to  beholding  and 
enjoying  the  presence  of  gold  and  of  raiment 
and  of  beautiful  young  men."  It  was  delight- 
ful to  be  assured  that  when  one  enjoyed  the 
beauty  of  a  golden  cup  or  of  a  silken  doublet, 
one  was  mounting  upon  the  first  rung  of  the 
ladder  that  leads  to  God.  But  by  what  dif- 
ferent stages  one  passed  up!  Marsilio  Ficino, 
the  first  Greek  scholar  of  his  time,  Platonist-in- 
ordinary  to  Lorenzo  the  Magnificent,  the  bene- 
factor of  Europe  in  that  he  first  translated  the 
complete  works  of  Plato  into  Latin  and  thus 
made  them  accessible  to  all,  says  in  his  intro- 
duction to  the  Symposium:  "Now  let  us  dis- 
cuss the  steps  by  which  Diotima  raised  Socrates 
from  the  lowest  by  way  of  the  intermediate,  to 
the  highest,  drawing  him  from  the  body  to  the 
soul,  from  the  soul  to  the  angel,  and  from  the 
angel  to  God." 

Plato's  doctrine  of  the  supreme  power  of  love 
owed  its  instant  popularity  and  also  the  trans- 
formation it  presently  underwent  to  the  same 
circumstance,  namely  the  familiarity  of  polite 
Europe  with  other  doctrines  concerning  the 


s's 
*1 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE       181 

same  matter.  On  the  one  hand  stood  the 
theory  of  courteous  love  and  its  widespread 
consequences.  On  the  other  side  stood  the 
author  of  the  Imitation  of  Christ,  saying  for 
his  part:  "Nothing  is  sweeter  than  love,  nothing 
more  courageous,  nothing  higher,  nothing 
wider,  nothing  more  pleasant,  nothing  fuller 
nor  better  in  heaven  and  earth;  because  love 
is  born  of  God,  and  cannot  rest  but  in  God, 
above  all  created  things.  He  that  loveth, 
flieth,  runneth  and  rejoiceth;  he  is  free  and  is 
not  bound.  He  giveth  all  for  all  and  hath  all 
in  all,  because  he  resteth  above  all  things  in 
one  sovereign  good,  from  which  all  that  is  good 
flows  and  proceeds.  Love  oftentimes  knoweth 
no  bounds,  but  is  fervent  beyond  all  measure. 
Love  feels  no  burden,  thinks  nothing  of  trouble, 
attempts  what  is  above  its  strength,  pleads  no 
excuse  of  impossibility;  for  it  thinks  all  things 
lawful  for  itself  and  all  things  possible.  If  any 
man  love,  he  knoweth  what  is  the  cry  of  this 
voice.  For  it  is  a  loud  cry  in  the  ears  of  God, 
this  ardent  affection  of  the  soul  which  saith, 
'My  God,  my  Love,  thou  art  all  mine  and  I 
am  all  thine.' " 

People  knew  quite  well  that  the  "love"  of  the 
Imitation  and  the  "love"  of  the  Chevalier  de  la 
Charrette  were  two  different  things,  and  by  all 
the  mental  habits  of  the  middle  age  these  two 


1 82  THE  LADY 

things  were  opposed.  Each  condemned  the 
other.  No  means  of  reconciliation  was 
dreamed  of  until  suddenly  it  appeared  that 
Plato  had  supplied  a  connecting  link.  But 
what  was  to  Plato  all  one  thing,  a  continuous 
road  leading  insensibly  upward,  was  still  to  the 
men  of  the  Renaissance  two  things,  a  lower 
floor  and  an  upper  with  a  ladder  between  them. 
Under  the  influence  of  this  conception  they 
believed  with  the  best  faith  in  the  world  that 
Plato  taught  the  existence  of  two  loves,  the 
natural  and  the  spiritual,  and  to  the  second 
alone  they  finally  attached  the  epithet  of 
"Platonic"  par  excellence.  Thus  a  foreign 
idea  was  foisted  upon  Plato  and  was  often 
enough  the  only  definite  doctrine  associated 
with  his  name  in  the  minds  of  people  who 
did  not  read  him;  just  as  many  persons  to-day 
who  have  never  read  Darwin  think  of  him  as  the 
man  who  said  that  we  are  descended  from 
monkeys. 

It  did  not  really  matter  to  the  lady  how  what 
her  age  called  Platonism  was  composed, — how 
many  parts  of  Plato  there  were  in  it,  to  how 
many  of  Dionysius  the  Areopagite.  Its  main 
thesis  was  one  of  which  she  saw  the  practical 
value  as  applied  to  her  own  place  in  the  scheme 
of  things.  Her  raison  d'etre  was  her  character 
as  a  thing  of  beauty  and  object  of  love.  To  se- 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE       183 

cure  her  dignity,  beauty  and  love  must  both  be 
nobly  conceived.  Diotima,  who  never  men- 
tioned a  lady  from  first  to  last,  nor,  we  may  be 
sure,  thought  of  one,  furnished  her  with  a  com- 
plete apology  for  her  existence.  Granting  that 
the  female  comes  into  the  problem  at  all,  she 
must  be  cultivated,  free  and  gracious  as  well  as 
comely, — in  other  words  she  must  be  a  lady. 
Plato  was  felt  to  be  essentially  aristocratic. 
The  homeliness  of  Socrates'  speech,  which 
shocked  Montaigne  even  while  it  delighted  him, 
did  not  disguise  for  Plato's  Italian  admirers  his 
complete  urbanity.  Indeed  among  the  many 
apparently  accidental  coincidences  that  made 
Plato  the  patron  of  the  Renaissance  must  be 
placed  high  in  the  scale  his  unrivalled  power 
of  reproducing  conversation,  which  fairly  made 
him  a  text-book  for  a  much-prized  art.  The 
talk  of  the  Renaissance  was  one  of  the  finest 
products  of  a  period  which  in  literature  was 
not  great,  and  in  talk  the  lady  shone,  as  she  is 
always  able  to  do  when  she  will  take  the  trouble. 
Her  usually  light  equipment  of  learning  is  a 
positive  advantage  to  her  in  conversation.  If 
she  cannot  like  Addison  "draw  for  a  thousand 
pounds,"  she  can  keep  her  sixpences  readily 
accessible.  The  intellectual  irresponsibility 
which  she  enjoys  by  consent,  enables  her  to  be 
paradoxical  without  losing  credit  and  flippant 


1 84  THE  LADY 

without  giving  pain.  To  be  brilliantly  wrong 
and  to  submit  gracefully  to  correction  consti- 
tutes her  greatest  success.  Her  talk  is  not  ex- 
pected to  inform  but  to  stimulate.  A  man  is 
handicapped  by  his  inveterate  habit  of  refer- 
ence to  the  facts.  To  talk  with  another  man  is 
like  playing  for  stakes,  while  to  talk  with  a  lady 
is  merely  playing  for  love.  The  lady  virtually 
opens  a  conversation  with  the  famous  exordium 
of  Rousseau:  "Commencons  par  ecarter  tons  les 
fails"  Her  business  is  with  sentiment,  emo- 
tion, manners,  the  comedy  of  life.  To  prove  a 
general  thesis  she  will  adduce  the  romantic 
story  of  the  friend  of  one  of  her  friends.  Yet 
though  her  thesis  may  have  an  insufficient  in- 
ductive basis  it  is  often  true.  It  is  the  result  of 
accumulated  observations  of  which  she  is  herself 
hardly  aware  and  of  which  she  could  certainly 
give  no  account.  Here  lies  her  essential  genius. 
When  a  literary  talent  accompanies  it  she  bursts 
forth  with  a  masterpiece  like  Pride  and  Prej- 
udice. Such  a  woman  as  George  Eliot  who 
has  a  masculine  taste  for  the  positive  is  still  at 
her  best  on  her  own  ground.  Her  guesses,  her 
"intuitions,"  are  more  valuable  than  her  in- 
ductions. The  modern  lady  is  constantly 
tempted  to  leave  her  coign  of  vantage  by  the 
fact  that  life  about  her  has  often  no  social  or- 
ganisation at  all  in  which  her  special  gifts  can 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE       185 

be  brought  into  play.  Only  at  certain  times,  of 
which  perhaps  the  Renaissance  is  thus  far  the 
most  noteworthy,  will  men  join  in  the  pursuit  of 
an  art  of  life.  The  men  of  the  Renaissance 
themselves  started  the  game,  and  they  found  at 
once  that  the  women  were  indispensable  part- 
ners. 

The  lady  of  the  Renaissance,  seen  in  her  most 
distinguished  examples,  has  a  great  name  for 
learning.  Italy,  to  begin  with,  was  full  of  fe- 
male infant  prodigies.  Some  were  daughters 
of  learned  men,  like  Dorothea  Bucca,  a  doctor 
of  the  University  of  Bologna,  and  Alessandra 
Scala  of  Florence  who  composed  Greek  and 
Latin  verses.  More  were  daughters  of  great 
houses  like  Cecilia  Gonzaga,  daughter  of  the 
Duke  of  Mantua,  Paula  Malatesta,  Isabella 
Sforza  and  the  great  Vittoria  Colonna.  From 
Italy  the  fashion  spread  in  every  direction. 
Lady  Jane  Grey  was  reading  Plato  in  the  orig- 
inal when  she  was  thirteen;  at  the  same  age 
Mary  Stuart  delivered  her  Latin  oration  at  the 
court  of  France;  Queen  Elizabeth  at  fourteen 
translated  the  Mirror  of  the  Sinful  Soul,  a 
famous  work  by  Margaret  of  France.  The 
career  of  Olympia  Morata  illustrates  the  cos- 
mopolitanism of  the  phenomenon.  She  was  the 
pupil  first  of  her  scholarly  father,  then,  at  the 
court  of  Ferrara,  of  the  most  learned  men  of  her 


1 86  THE  LADY 

time.  At  fourteen  she  was  writing  a  eulogy  of 
Cicero  in  Latin,  of  Mucius  Scaevola  in  Greek, 
speaking  both  languages,  giving  public  lectures. 
When  she  married  Gruntler,  a  German  phys- 
ician, and  threw  in  her  lot  with  the  reformers, 
Italy  became  too  hot  to  hold  her,  but  she  con- 
tinued to  live  the  learned  life  at  Wurzburg  and 
at  Heidelberg,  accepted  as  an  equal  by  the  men 
of  letters,  in  a  land  where  in  general  the  lady 
was  still  at  the  needlework  stage.  In  practice 
this  alarming  spread  of  erudition  among  female 
children  was  apparently  confined  to  the  well-to- 
do  and  noble.  And  Jean  Bouchet  laid  down  the 
theory,  in  defending  a  learned  lady:  "Some  find 
it  strange,"  says  he,  "  that  this  lady  employs  her 
mind  in  composing  books,  saying  that  this  is  not 
the  business  of  her  sex.  But  this  superficial 
judgment  proceeds  from  ignorance,  for  in  dis- 
cussing such  pursuits  we  must  distinguish 
among  women,  according  to  their  birth  and 
estate.  It  is  my  opinion  that  women  of  low 
condition  who  must  needs  busy  themselves  with 
familiar  and  domestic  matters,  should  not  occupy 
themselves  with  learning,  which  is  a  matter 
repugnant  to  rusticity.  But  queens,  princesses 
and  other  ladies  who  have  men-servants  and 
maids  to  relieve  them  of  vulgar  tasks  will  do 
much  better  to  use  their  minds  and  time  in  good 
and  honourable  study  than  in  dancing  and  feast- 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE       187 

ing."  The  ancients,  he  adds,  abounded  in 
learned  women,  and  among  Christian  ladies  he 
cites  St.  Jerome's  Paula,  St.  Catherine  whose 
science  confounded  the  doctors,  and  "toutes  les 
Sibilles." 

If  learning  began  early  with  the  girls  of  the 
Renaissance,  so  did  the  rest  of  life.  Anne  of 
France  fell  in  love  at  the  age  of  ten.  St. 
Theresa's  emotions  (she  tells  us)  began  to 
sway  her  when  she  was  six  and  she  had  run 
away  twice  before  she  was  twenty.  Vives,  the 
great  Spanish  educator,  based  his  theory  of  edu- 
cation not  on  the  nature  of  the  ideal  young  girl, 
but  of  the  young  girl  as  he  saw  her.  "The 
craters  of  Etna,"  he  said,  "cannot  vie  with 
the  fires  of  the  temperament  of  a  young  girl  in- 
flamed by  high  feeding."  To  control  these 
flames  Vives  proposed  a  vegetable  diet  and  a 
classical  education,  harmonised  with  a  little 
domestic  science.  His  method  seemed  impreg- 
nable. If  anyone  objected  that  learning  makes 
women  irreligious,  he  could  point  to  the  prom- 
inent place  occupied  in  his  curriculum  by 
Biblical  exegesis.  If  the  objection  was  that  a 
learned  lady  makes  a  bad  housewife,  he  boasted 
that  with  the  scientific  training  he  recommended, 
his  pupils  would  be  the  most  intelligent  of  cooks 
and  nurses.  Vives  went  to  England  with  Cath- 
erine of  Aragon  and  started  the  ball  rolling 


1 88  THE  LADY 

there.  The  practical  and  manly  character  of 
his  education  is  reflected  in  the  mental  habits 
of  the  great  Elizabeth  herself.  But  in  Italy  it 
was  still  borne  in  mind  that  the  lady's  business 
is  to  charm.  Plain  cooking  should  not  be 
thought  of  among  her  accomplishments  but 
learning  was  essential.  "A  little  girl,"  said 
Bembo,  "ought  to  learn  Latin ;  it  completes  her 
charm."  And  Greek  did  not  hurt  her.  Her 
reading  was  chosen  with  a  view  to  exciting  and 
refining  her  sensibility;  Virgil,  parts  of  Horace, 
Dante,  Petrarch,  Bembo  and  Castiglione  were 
suggested.  She  was  to  face  love,  to  realise  its 
two  aspects  and  to  learn  to  choose  the  better 
and  reject  the  worse.  Melancholy  was  to  be 
banished  by  learning  and  the  pursuit  of  beauty. 
No  allowance  was  made  for  the  sense  of  humour. 
In  France  on  the  other  hand,  melancholy  was 
banished  by  laughter.  It  has  been  said  that 
Rabelais  was  the  Michelangelo  of  France.  It 
is  astonishing  to  learn  what  the  young  ladies  of 
that  land  laughed  at  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth 
centuries.  Some  of  the  Colloquies  of  Erasmus 
that  were  written  especially  for  the  young  con- 
tained passages  that,  among  others,  caused  the 
collection  to  be  censured  by  the  Sorbonne, 
placed  on  the  Index  at  Rome  and  burned  in 
Spain.  The  famous  flea,  perceived  on  the 
bosom  of  Mile,  des  Roches  and  celebrated  in 


Margaret,  Queen  of  Navarre. 

From   a  drawing   by   Clouet,   in   the   Bibliotheque   Nationale,    Paris. 

See  p. 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE       189 

song  by  Scaliger  and  Turnebus,  by  Brisson  and 
de  Harley,  has  served  in  the  hands  of  Sainte 
Beuve  to  characterise  the  intellectual  society  of 
the  time.  But  it  is  only  a  flea  and  can  be 
swallowed;  the  real  strain  comes  when  one 
catches  sight  of  the  camel,  as  in  the  tales  listened 
to  and  told  by  the  young  ladies  of  the  Hepta- 
meron.  These  tales  cannot  justly  be  called  im- 
moral. On  the  contrary,  when  they  touch  on 
morals  at  all  they  refer  to  a  wholesome  and 
sometimes  even  to  a  noble  standard.  The 
wicked  friar  always  comes  to  grief  and  gener- 
ally (which  is  worse)  to  ridicule.  What  gives 
them  their  rakish  air  is  the  fact  that  the  ladies 
are  frankly  and  manfully  amused  by  the  indec- 
orous, and  the  youngest  lady  is  the  frankest. 
France  was  already  the  home  of  the  demi-vierge. 
Modern  society  draws  two  fairly  sharp  lines 
through  the  mass  of  womankind,  dividing  it  into 
three  groups.  In  the  first  group  are  the  women 
who  will  neither  hear  nor  speak  the  unconven- 
tional; in  the  second  the  women  who  will  hear 
it  but  will  not  speak  it;  in  the  third  the  women 
who  will  both  hear  and  speak.  On  the  evidence 
of  the  Heptameron  there  were  no  such  lines  in 
the  France  of  Francis  the  First.  One  reason 
may  have  been  the  fact  that  girls  were  taught 
by  men.  A  great  deal  is  explained  in  the  case 
of  Margaret  of  France  when  we  reflect  that 


190  THE  LADY 

she  received  her  education  from  a  tutor  precisely 
as  her  brother  did  and  very  likely  in  his  com- 
pany. The  governess  seems  to  have  been  disap- 
proved of  even  by  professed  admirers  of  the 
feminine  mind.  "I  allow  woman  to  learn," 
said  Bruno;  "to  teach,  never."  The  domestic 
tutor  had  his  drawbacks.  Bran  tome  had  a  poor 
opinion  of  him,  saying  that  he  abused  his  pro- 
fessional opportunities,  and  that  when  he  was 
obliged  to  read  the  Bible  with  his  pupils  he 
selected  the  most  risque  passages.  No  such 
criticism  could  apply  to  Vives,  tutor  of  prin- 
cesses as  well  as  of  princes,  whose  ideas  were 
austere.  He  disapproved  of  what  we  call 
"fiction"  as  reading  for  young  girls.  The  ro- 
mances outraged  both  morals  and  logic;  they 
had  no  reasonable  relation  to  life.  Erasmus, 
on  the  contrary,  as  we  have  seen,  so  thoroughly 
believed  in  light  literature  for  the  young  that 
he  prepared  some  himself.  Anne  of  France  too, 
another  educational  authority,  believed  in  a 
special  literature  pour  la  jeunesse,  and  has  left 
us  a  dreary  example  from  her  own  pen, — a  tale 
founded  on  a  tragic  episode  in  Froissart,  where 
a  father  has  to  betray  his  military  trust  or  allow 
his  son  to  be  murdered  by  the  English.  Virtue 
triumphs,  the  father  does  his  duty,  the  mother 
swoons,  the  son  is  executed.  Sunday-school 
fiction  is  inaugurated. 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE       191 

II 

IN  all  these  differences  of  opinion  among 
those  entitled  to  have  an  opinion  we  have 
the  very  breath  of  the  Renaissance.  The 
middle  age  as  we  see  it  looks  very  like  a  bed 
with  too  many  people  in  it,  where  all  must  turn 
over  at  once.  In  the  centuries  that  followed 
people  had  somehow  plucked  up  courage  to  de- 
mand rooms  to  themselves.  The  only  general 
statements  that  can  safely  be  made  concerning 
the  lady  of  those  centuries  are  those  which  ex- 
plain that  generalisation  is  no  longer  possible. 

The  most  satisfactory  way  to  study  her  under 
the  new  condition  is  to  take  one  or  two  concrete 
examples,  assured  that  any  such  will  expand  be- 
neath our  eyes  and  establish  for  us  any  number 
of  relations  with  all  sorts  of  matters.  For  if  we 
are  not  at  liberty  to  generalize  about  that  soci- 
ety, it  never  wearied  of  generalising  about  it- 
self. 

Mr.  Lowes  Dickinson  has  lately  given  the 
world  a  fresh  impression  of  the  value  and  charm 
of  the  philosophic  dialogue,  a  literary  form 
which,  like  the  epistolary  novel,  has  its  obvious 
dangers  and  is  for  the  most  part,  perhaps  wisely, 
looked  upon  askance.  As  Mr.  Dickinson  uses 
it,  with  a  new  content,  it  carries  associations  of 
a  purely  formal  sort,  primarily  of  course  with 


192  THE  LADY 

Plato.  It  must  be  said,  I  think,  that  while  the 
Plato-lover  is  always  glad  to  be  reminded  of 
Plato,  it  is  more  magnanimous  than  wise  in 
a  modern  author  to  evoke  that  great  shade 
too  vividly  as  a  standard  of  comparison.  But 
the  reader  of  the  Modern  Symposium  as  he 
closes  the  book  with  the  last  speaker's  confes- 
sion of  faith  in  his  ears  and  the  vision  of  early 
morning  before  his  eyes,  is  reminded,  more 
legitimately  than  of  Plato,  of  another  great 
dialogue  which  closes  also  with  a  hymn,  and 
with  the  discovery  that  "a  beautiful  dawn  of 
rosy  hue  was  already  born  in  the  east,  and  that 
all  the  stars  had  vanished  save  Venus,  sweet 
mistress  of  the  sky,  who  holds  the  bonds  of  night 
and  day;  from  which  there  seemed  to  breathe 
a  gentle  wind  that  filled  the  air  with  crisp  cool- 
ness and  began  to  waken  sweet  choruses  of 
joyous  birds  in  the  murmuring  forests  of  the 
hills  hard  by."  *  In  this  dialogue  Count 
Baldesar  Castiglione,  setting  out  to  describe 
the  perfect  courtier,  gives  us  incidentally  a 
treatise  on  the  lady  of  his  day,  her  theory  and 
practice,  together  with  a  magnificent  statement 
of  the  doctrine  of  Platonic  love. 

Federico  di  Montefeltro  built  in  the  fifteenth 

*  The  Courtier.  Translated  by  Mr.  L.  E.  Opdycke.  The  suc- 
ceeding paragraphs  are  chiefly  a  condensation  from  Mr.  Op- 
dycke's  version. 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE       193 

century  on  the  rugged  site  of  Urbino  a  palace 
regarded  by  many  as  the  most  beautiful  to  be 
found  in  all  Italy;  and  he  so  well  furnished  it 
with  everything  suitable  that  it  seemed  not  a 
palace  but  a  city  in  the  form  of  a  palace, — 
silver  vases,  hangings  of  richest  cloth-of-gold, 
antique  statues,  pictures  most  choice,  and  a 
goodly  number  of  most  excellent  and  rare  books 
in  Greek,  Latin  and  Hebrew.  This  duke, 
dying  gloriously  as  he  had  lived,  was  succeeded 
by  his  only  son,  Guidobaldo,  infirm  of  body  but 
great  in  spirit,  who  married  Madonna  Elisa- 
betta  Gonzaga  and  gathered  about  him  a 
household  of  very  noble  talents.  The  house 
could  truly  be  called  the  very  abode  of  mirth; 
for,  not  to  speak  of  the  honour  it  was  to  each 
to  serve  such  a  lord,  there  was  born  in  the  hearts 
of  all  a  supreme  contentment  in  the  presence  of 
the  duchess,  where  also  was  ever  to  be  found 
the  lady  Emilia  Pia,  sister-in-law  to  the  duke, 
but  widowed  though  young.  She  was  endowed 
with  such  lively  wit  and  judgment  that  every- 
one gained  wisdom  and  worth  from  her.  She 
it  was  who  one  evening  when  the  company  had 
gathered  as  usual  about  the  duchess,  started  a 
game  in  which  we  may  see  the  offspring  of  the 
Courts  of  Love  which  used  to  entertain  the 
middle  age.  Discussion  was  still  dear,  and 
Emilia's  game  consisted  in  requiring  each 


i94  THE  LADY 

gentleman  present  to  propose  a  topic.  Many 
and  tempting  were  the  suggestions.  My  lord 
Caspar  Pallavicino  who,  whether  in  sport  or 
earnest,  professed  to  think  lightly  of  ladies,  pro- 
posed that  each  should  tell  what  virtue  he 
would  have  of  all  others  in  the  person  beloved 
and  also,  since  all  must  have  some  blemish,  what 
fault  he  would  have  in  her.  Another  would 
hear  from  each,  if  she  whom  he  loves  must  need 
be  angry  with  him,  by  what  cause  he  would 
have  her  anger  roused.  Another  would  hear 
from  each,  if  she  whom  he  loves  must  need  be 
angry  with  him,  from  which  he  would  have  her 
anger  spring,  her  fault  or  his  own.  These  and 
other  proposals  were  defeated  by  the  suggestion 
that  one  of  the  company  should  be  selected  to 
describe  the  Perfect  Courtier,  and  after  two 
evenings  had  been  spent  in  carrying  out  this 
plan,  the  charge  was  laid  upon  Giuliano  de' 
Medici  to  describe  the  perfect  Court  Lady. 

Giuliano  admitted  at  the  outset  that  certain 
qualities  were  equally  desirable  in  man  and 
woman,  such  as  prudence,  magnanimity  and 
continence;  and  that  certain  others  were 
desirable  in  all  women  alike,  such  as  kindness, 
discretion  and  housewifery.  The  special  charac- 
teristic of  a  lady  who  lives  at  court  should  be 
a  certain  pleasant  affability,  whereby  she  may  be 
able  to  entertain  politely  every  sort  of  man  with 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE       195 

agreeable  converse;  she  should  unite  with  calm 
and  modest  manners  a  quick  vivacity  of  spirit 
whereby  she  may  show  herself  alien  to  all  in- 
delicacy, and  she  must  preserve  a  certain  mean 
(difficult  and  composed  almost  of  contraries) 
and  must  barely  touch  certain  limits  but  not 
pass  them.  Thus  she  ought  not  to  be  so  coy 
and  seem  so  to  abhor  company  and  talk  that  are 
a  little  free,  as  to  take  her  leave  as  soon  as  she 
finds  herself  therein;  nor  ought  she,  on  the  other 
hand,  for  the  sake  of  showing  herself  free  and 
agreeable,  to  utter  unseemly  words;  but  when 
she  is  present  at  such  talk,  she  ought  to  listen 
with  a  little  blush. 

The  question  of  the  lady's  exercise  brought 
out  opposed  opinions,  each  based  on  aesthetic 
considerations.  Some  had  seen  ladies  play 
tennis,  handle  weapons,  ride,  go  hunting  and 
perform  nearly  all  the  exercises  that  a  cavalier 
can.  Accolti  boldly  regretted  that  with  many 
other  good  old  customs  we  have  lost  that  of  the 
ancients  which  permitted  women  to  wrestle  un- 
clothed with  men.  But  Giuliano  de'  Medici 
would  have  none  of  this.  His  lady  must  not 
practice  the  rugged  exercises  of  men;  even  in 
dancing  she  must  not  use  too  violent  movements, 
but  the  circumspection  and  gentle  daintiness 
that  befits  her.  Nor  in  singing  or  playing 
should  she  employ  those  abrupt  diminutions 


196  THE  LADY 

which  show  more  skill  than  sweetness.  Imagine 
how  unlovely  it  would  be  to  see  a  woman  play 
drum,  fife  or  trumpet! 

The  lady  should  carefully  consider  her  dress, 
since  she  must  take  care  for  beauty,  and  beauty 
is  of  divers  sorts.  She  should  study  her  style, 
both  of  soul  and  body,  and  dress  accordingly. 
And  the  lady  should  have  knowledge  of  letters, 
music,  painting.  And  thus,  in  her  talk,  her 
laughter,  her  play,  she  will  be  very  graceful  and 
will  entertain  appropriately  whoever  comes  be- 
fore her. 

My  lord  Caspar  then  said,  laughing:  "Since 
you  have  given  women  letters  and  continence 
and  magnanimity  and  temperance,  I  only  marvel 
that  you  would  not  also  have  them  govern  cities, 
make  laws  and  lead  armies,  and  let  the  men  stay 
at  home  to  cook  or  spin." 

Giuliano  replied,  also  laughing;  "Perhaps 
even  this  would  not  be  amiss." 

But  my  lord  Caspar  believed  that  since  nature 
always  aims  to  make  things  most  perfect,  she 
would  continually  bring  forth  men  if  she  could; 
and  when  a  woman  is  born,  it  is  a  mistake  or 
defeat  of  nature,  as  in  the  case  of  one  that  is 
born  blind  or  halt.  Moreover  (he  asks)  why  is 
it  that  a  woman  always  loves  her  first  lover, 
while  a  man  soon  hates  his  first  mistress? 
Surely  because  the  woman  receives  perfection 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE       197 

from  the  man,  and  the  man  imperfection  from 
the  woman,  and  everyone  naturally  loves  what 
makes  him  perfect  and  hates  what  makes  him 
imperfect.  He  explains  the  high  value  set 
upon  "virtue"  in  women  by  the  fact  that  when 
that  goes  their  whole  worth  goes,  for  the  world 
has  no  good  from  women  except  the  bearing  of 
children. 

While  the  main  argument  rests  in  the  hands 
of  the  men  of  the  party,  who  muster  on  one  side 
or  the  other  all  the  accumulated  ideas  of  their 
day  in  a  blend  of  theology,  courteous  love  and 
neo-Platonism,  the  ladies  are  allowed,  by  the  art 
of  the  dialogue,  to  be  seen  in  the  act  of  gov- 
erning society.  Castiglione  is  not  content  to 
label  his  pet,  Emilia  Pia,  witty,  charming  and 
endowed  with  judgment;  he  does  a  much  more 
difficult  thing  and  shows  her  actually  to  be  so. 
The  part  she  played  at  Urbino  as  lieutenant  to 
the  duchess  suggests  from  some  points  of  view 
the  role  of  Julie  de  Lespinasse.  But  in  this 
case  there  was  no  treachery.  Emilia  was  a 
faithful  friend  in  dark  days  as  well  as  fair,  ac- 
companied her  duchess  into  exile,  and,  surviv- 
ing her,  was  her  executrix.  She  was  unques- 
tionably one  of  the  great  artists  of  the 
Renaissance,  but  an  artist  in  a  perishable 
medium,  like  an  opera-singer.  Castiglione  at 
the  beginning  of  his  third  book  says  that  as 


198  THE  LADY 

Pythagoras  discovered  the  measure  of  Hercules' 
body  from  the  measure  of  his  foot,  so  the  reader 
may  judge  of  the  preeminence  of  the  court  of 
Urbino  by  this  glimpse  of  its  amusements.  In 
the  same  way  we  may  measure  the  genius  of 
Emilia  and  the  duchess  by  the  record  of  a  single 
evening.  Having  between  them  kept  the  men 
in  play,  and  caused  a  great  deal  of  good  talk  to 
be  uttered  without  weariness,  they  changed  the 
key  and  desired  two  of  the  ladies  to  dance. 
Whereupon  a  very  charming  musician  began  to 
play  upon  his  instruments;  and  joining  hands 
the  two  ladies  performed  first  a  Spanish  dance 
and  then  a  French  one,  with  consummate  grace 
and  to  the  great  delight  of  those  who  saw  them. 
One  of  the  guests  at  Urbino  during  these 
famous  four  days  was  Pietro  Bembo,  afterwards 
cardinal,  the  Peter  on  whom,  as  Professor 
Fletcher  says,  was  founded  the  new  religion  of 
beauty,  and  who  had  published  for  it  in  that 
very  year  one  of  the  earliest  of  its  gospels,  Gli 
Asolani.  At  the  end  of  the  fourth  evening  my 
lord  Caspar  Pallavicino,  always  fertile  in  dif- 
ficulties, raised  an  interesting  one.  It  was  ap- 
parent that  the  perfect  courtier  would  not  be 
a  young  man,  for  the  worth  and  authority  by 
which  he  was  to  allure  his  prince  are  inevitably 
the  fruit  of  years.  On  the  other  hand,  it  had 
been  settled  that  he  would  be  a  lover.  Now, 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE      199 

how  becoming  is  it  for  a  man  no  longer  young 
to  be  in  love?  Is  there  not  danger  that  the 
lover  will  forget  to  instruct  his  prince,  and  that 
his  follies  will  make  him  a  laughing-stock? 

Bembo  was  on  his  feet  instantly, — this  was  his 
subject.  There  are  two  ways  of  loving.  If 
the  courtier  choose  the  better  way,  he  would 
get  no  blame  but  much  praise  and  highest  hap- 
piness unaccompanied  by  any  pain,  which  rarely 
and  almost  never  happens  with  young  men. 

The  duchess  immediately  laid  upon  him  the 
task  of  teaching  the  courtier  this  love  which  is 
so  happy  that  it  brings  with  it  no  pain;  and 
Bembo,  having  first  remained  silent  awhile,  then 
settled  himself  a  little  as  if  about  to  speak  of 
something  important,  and  began  at  last  to  speak, 
playfully  at  first  but  with  a  growing  earnestness 
and  eloquence  which  ended  in  a  burst  of  pure 
enthusiasm. 

According  to  the  definition  of  the  ancient 
sages  (said  messer  Pietro)  love  is  naught  but  a 
certain  desire  to  enjoy  beauty.  The  beauty  we 
have  especially  in  mind  is  an  effluence  of  divine 
goodness,  diffused  like  the  sun's  light  upon  all 
created  things,  yet  when  it  finds  a  face  well  pro- 
portioned and  framed  with  a  certain  pleasant 
harmony  of  various  colours,  it  infuses  itself 
therein  and  appears  most  beautiful,  like  a  sun- 
beam falling  upon  a  vase  of  gold  set  with 


200  THE  LADY 

precious  gems.  Thus  it  agreeably  attracts  the 
eyes  of  men,  and  thereby  entering  the  soul  stirs 
her  with  a  new  sweetness  and  excites  in  her  a 
desire  for  its  own  self.  Then  if  the  soul  allows 
herself  to  be  guided  by  the  judgment  of  sense, 
she  runs  into  very  grievous  errors,  and  judges 
that  the  body  wherein  the  beauty  is  seen  is  the 
chief  cause  thereof ;  whoever  thinks  to  enjoy  the 
beauty  by  possessing  the  body  deceives  himself. 
Hence  all  those  lovers  who  satisfy  their  desires 
with  the  women  they  love,  love  most  unhappily; 
for  either  they  never  attain  their  desires  (which 
is  great  unhappiness)  or  if  they  do  attain 
thereto,  they  find  they  have  attained  their  woe. 
Such  lovers  are  young  men  in  general,  but  the 
contrary  happens  to  those  of  mature  years;  if 
they  are  inflamed  by  beauty,  they  are  not  de- 
ceived. Therefore  their  possession  of  it  always 
brings  them  good;  because  beauty  is  good,  and 
hence  true  love  of  beauty  is  most  good  and  holy. 
Beauty  springs  from  God.  A  wicked  soul 
rarely  inhabits  a  beautiful  body.  Look  at  the 
state  of  this  great  fabric  of  the  world,  the  round 
firmament  adorned  with  so  many  lights.  These 
things  have  such  influence  upon  one  another 
that  if  they  were  changed  for  an  instant  they 
could  not  hold  together  and  would  wreck  the 
world;  they  have  also  such  beauty  and  grace 
that  human  wit  cannot  imagine  anything  more 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE      201 

beautiful.  Much  praise  is  therefore  bestowed 
on  everything  in  the  world  by  saying  that  it  is 
beautiful,  and  we  may  say  that  the  good  and 
the  beautiful  are  the  same  thing,  and  especially 
in  the  human  body;  of  whose  beauty  I  think  the 
most  immediate  cause  is  beauty  of  the  soul. 
To  enjoy  beauty  without  suffering  there  is  need 
that  the  courtier  should,  with  the  aid  of  reason, 
wholly  turn  his  desire  from  the  body  to  the 
beauty  alone.  In  this  wise  he  will  be  beyond 
all  the  bitterness  that  the  young  nearly  always 
feel.  He  will  do  no  injury  to  the  husband  or 
the  kinsfolk  of  the  beloved  lady;  he  will  put 
no  infamy  upon  her.  But  he  will  find  another 
blessing  greater  still  if  he  will  employ  this  love 
to  mount  to  one  much  higher, — if  he  will  no 
longer  contemplate  the  particular  beauty  of  one 
woman,  but  that  universal  beauty  which  adorns 
all  bodies.  And  just  as  love  leads  the  soul 
from  the  particular  to  the  universal  beauty,  so 
in  the  highest  stage  it  leads  her  from  the  par- 
ticular to  the  universal  intellect.  Hence  the 
soul,  kindled  by  the  most  sacred  fire  of  true 
divine  love,  flies  to  unite  herself  with  the  angelic 
nature;  changed  into  an  angel,  she  understands 
all  things  intelligible,  and  without  veil  or  cloud 
views  the  wide  sea  of  pure  divine  beauty. 

What  mortal  tongue,  then,  O  most  holy  Love, 
can  praise  thee  worthily?    Accept  our  souls 


202  THE  LADY 

which  are  offered  to  thee  in  sacrifice ;  burn  them 
in  that  living  flame  which  consumes  all  mortal 
dross,  to  the  end  that,  being  wholly  separated 
from  the  body,  they  may  unite  with  divine 
beauty  by  a  perpetual  and  very  sweet  bond,  and 
that  we  may  at  last  die  a  most  happy  and  living 
death,  as  died  of  old  those  ancient  fathers  whose 
souls  thou,  by  the  most  glowing  power  of  con- 
templation, didst  ravish  from  the  body  and  unite 
with  God. 

Having  thus  spoken  Bembo  remained  silent 
awhile  as  if  in  ecstasy,  and  the  company  with 
him,  until  at  last  the  lady  Emilia,  gently  pluck- 
ing him  by  the  border  of  his  robe,  said:  "Have 
a  care,  messer  Pietro,  that  with  these  thoughts 
your  soul  also  does  not  forsake  your  body." 

"My  lady,"  replied  messer  Pietro,  "thai 
would  not  be  the  first  miracle  that  love  has 
wrought  upon  me." 

Ill 

VERGERIO,  the  pope's  nuncio  in  France, 
gives    praise    to   Jesus    Christ   for    the 
great     ladies     of     his     time,     Vittoria 
Colonna  at  Rome,  Leonora  Gonzaga  at  Urbino, 
Renee  of   France   at   Ferrara,   and   Margaret, 
Queen  of  Navarre.     The  lady  named  last  was  so 
obliging  as  to  compose  in  her  person,  her  life  and 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE      203 

works,  a  strongly  representative  figure  of  the 
Renaissance  in  France,  and  to  afford  in  par- 
ticular some  striking  instances  of  its  likeness 
and  unlikeness  to  the  Renaissance  in  Italy. 
Margaret  who  is  known  to  posterity  chiefly  as 
the  foster-mother  if  not  the  actual  parent  of  a 
collection  of  scandalous  tales,  was  in  her  own 
day  regarded  as  a  very  serious  person.  Vittoria 
Colonna  felt  for  her  a  religious  awe;  she  writes 
that  when  she  thinks  of  Margaret  she  is  filled 
with  the  same  fear  that  seized  the  Israelites 
when  they  saw  the  glory  of  God  revealed  in 
fire  on  the  mountain-top.  Clement  Marot 
spoke  of  her  as  "woman  in  body,  man  in  heart, 
angel  in  head."  She  was  profoundly  interested 
in  religion  and  wrote  continually  upon  its 
problems, — The  Mirror  of  the  Sinful  Soul,  The 
Strife  between  Flesh  and  Spirit,  and  The  Orison 
of  Jesus  Christ.  A  faithful  Catholic  to  the 
end,  she  belonged  to  the  group  who  were  re- 
formers before  the  Reformation,  founding  and 
encouraging  the  ideas  that  were  to  horrify 
them  by  their  logical  consequences,  precisely 
as  polite  society  in  the  eighteenth  century  played 
with  the  ideas  of  the  Revolution.  The  Mirror 
was  censured  by  the  Sorbonne  as  unorthodox, 
and  but  for  the  forcible  intervention  of  the 
king,  her  brother,  a  princess  of  France  would 
have  been  banned  as  a  heretic.  In  her  castle 


204  THE  LADY 

of  Nerac  many  a  reformer  found  protection 
from  ecclesiastical  persecution. 

Margaret's  education  had  of  course  been  the 
work  of  a  tutor,  Robert  Hurault,  Baron  of 
Auzay  and  Abbot  of  St.  Martin  of  Autun. 
With  this  worthy  man  she  read  Latin  and 
French,  Spanish  and  Italian,  but  although  she 
could  speak  good  Spanish  and  good  Italian, 
Brantome  says  that  she  always  made  use  of  her 
mother-tongue  for  matters  of  moment.  It  is 
said  that  she  also  had  some  lessons  in  Hebrew, 
and  when  the  time  came  to  pronounce  her 
funeral  oration  Sainte-Marthe  was  ready  to 
affirm  that  she  had  been  instructed  by  the  most 
learned  men  of  her  time  in  the  philosophical 
principles  of  the  ancients.  She  has  been  cele- 
brated more  recently  as  a  Platonist  and  the 
cause  of  Platonism  in  others,  a  student  herself 
of  the  master's  philosophy  and  influential  in 
introducing  it  as  an  element  of  the  French 
Renaissance.  It  is  quite  true  that  Margaret's 
religion  and  her  theory  of  love,  her  verses  and 
her  tales,  are  full  of  the  mystic  neo-Platonism 
that  we  have  already  noted  as  diffused  in  the 
middle  age  and  concentrated  in  the  Renaissance ; 
but  the  reader  will  do  well  to  remember  here 
as  in  other  cases  the  difference  between  Plato 
seen  through  a  glass  darkly  and  Plato  seen  face 
to  face.  All  that  is  Platonic  in  Margaret's 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE      205 

writings  could  have  been  supplied  easily  by 
Petrarch  and  Bembo  between  them,  and  there 
is  no  need  to  credit  her  with  a  first-hand  knowl- 
edge of  the  master  for  which  there  seems  to  be 
no  direct  evidence. 

The  Heptameron  has  thus  much  in  common 
with  the  Courtier  that  it  shows  us  a  group  of 
men  and  women  of  the  best  society,  under  the 
presidency  of  a  very  great  lady  indeed  (if,  as 
seems  likely,  Oisille  represents  Margaret's 
mother,  Louise  of  Savoy,)  organising  a  game 
for  the  purpose  of  refined  and  edifying  enter- 
tainment. It  must  not  be  decided  off-hand  that 
Margaret's  definition  of  these  adjectives  was 
altogether  different  from  Castiglione's,  for  an 
earlier  draft  of  the  Courtier  shows  that  the 
published  text  has  been  considerably  Bowdler- 
ised.  Still  it  is  but  fair  to  compare  final 
form  with  final  form,  and  as  they  both  stand, 
the  Courtier  is  a  far  more  ladylike  work  than 
the  tales  of  the  Queen  of  Navarre.  In 
Margaret's  book  however  the  greatest  inde- 
corum is  confined  precisely  to  the  tales,  which 
are  the  less  original  part.  The  dialogue, 
which  is  in  some  lights  the  more  interesting 
portion,  does  not  reveal  a  different  standard 
from  that  of  the  Italian.  Apart  from  what  is 
after  all  but  a  question  of  manners,  the  two 
books  agree  in  a  very  fundamental  matter. 


206  THE  LADY 

They  both  show  a  society  of  men  and  women 
keenly  interested  in  the  same  subjects,  namely 
the  complexities  of  social  life  and  especially  of 
the  relation  therein  of  the  sexes  to  each  other. 
Both  in  other  words  rest  on  the  assumption  that 
social  life  is  an  art.  On  this  assumption  and 
on  this  only  the  lady's  importance  is  equal  to 
that  of  the  gentleman.  The  economic  question 
fades  out  and  the  physiological  question  be- 
comes subordinate.  The  antagonism  of  sex 
remains  but  it  is  no  longer  actual  war;  the  foils 
are  buttoned.  The  elementary  problems  of 
existence  have  been  solved;  in  their  place 
stand  the  questions  arising  out  of  the  postulates 
of  social  convention.  Here  the  lady  not  only 
has  her  rights  but  she  is  indispensable.  Her 
point  of  view  is  listened  to  with  interest.  If 
the  comparison  may  be  permitted,  Margaret's 
view  of  the  province  and  function  of  fiction  is 
precisely  that  of  Mr.  Henry  James.  Mr. 
James  and  all  his  contemporaries  have  the 
misfortune  to  live  in  an  age  when  but  a  very 
small  portion  of  society  is  interested  in  the 
pursuit  of  happiness  under  the  forms  of  art. 
In  Margaret's  day  everyone  was  interested  in 
it;  it  really  mattered.  To  the  lady,  herself  the 
creation  of  art,  it  was  her  vital  air,  though  she 
did  not  realise  this  until  some  centuries  later 
when  it  began  to  be  pumped  out.  Believing 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE      207 

that  her  universe  was  stable  and  her  place  there- 
fore assured,  she  used  it  as  the  basis  of  a  by  no 
means  ignoble  theory  of  her  rights  and  duties. 

The  group  of  travellers  who  found  themselves 
detained  at  the  Abbey  of  Our  Lady  of  Serrance 
by  the  flood  of  the  river  Gave  arranged  an 
interesting  programme  to  help  them  through 
the  tedious  days.  Early  in  the  morning  they 
repaired  to  the  room  of  the  aged  lady  Oisille 
and  listened  for  an  hour  to  her  reading  of  the 
scriptures;  then  piously  heard  mass,  and  went 
to  dinner  at  ten  o'clock.  After  dinner  each  re- 
tired to  his  room  to  meditate  and  prepare  his 
contribution  to  the  afternoon's  entertainment. 
At  noon  the  company  assembled  in  a  pleasant 
meadow  by  the  riverside,  where  trees  gave 
abundant  shade  and  the  grass  was  soft  and  thick 
to  sit  upon.  After  each  day's  quota  of  tales  was 
told  the  company  went  to  vespers.  The  first 
day  they  found  they  had  kept  the  monks  wait- 
ing a  full  hour  or  more.  On  the  second  day 
when  they  repaired  to  the  church  they  found 
that  although  the  vesper-bell  had  rung  there 
was  not  a  single  monk  present  to  say  the  office. 
"The  monks,  indeed,  had  heard  that  the  com- 
pany assembled^  in  the  meadow  to  tell  the 
pleasantest  tales  imaginable,  and  being  fonder 
of  pleasure  than  of  their  prayers,  they  had  gone 
and  hidden  themselves  in  a  ditch,  where  they 


208  THE  LADY 

lay  flat  on  their  bellies  behind  a  very  thick 
hedge;  and  they  had  there  listened  so  eagerly 
to  the  stories  that  they  had  not  heard  the  mon- 
astery bell,  as  was  soon  clearly  shown,  for  they 
returned  in  such  great  haste  that  they  almost 
lacked  breath  to  begin  the  saying  of  vespers." 
This  combination  of  piety  and  irreverence,  of 
interest  in  the  scriptures,  obedience  to  the  ritual 
of  the  church  and  contempt  for  the  monk,  casts 
various  lights  on  the  frame  of  mind  of  society 
just  before  the  Reformation.  Religion  bore  on 
life  with  a  naivete  that  we  are  generally  inclined 
to  attribute  to  the  heathen  alone.  "They  pro- 
ceeded to  the  contemplation  of  the  mass,  when 
one  and  all  commended  themselves  to  the  Holy 
Ghost  in  order  that  they  might  that  day  be  en- 
abled to  satisfy  their  merry  audience."  One  of 
the  ladies  told  the  story  of  an  amour  of  Francis 
the  First,  "a  prince  that  feared  and  loved  God." 
He  found  that  a  short-cut  to  the  house  of  the 
lady  he  loved  took  him  through  a  monastery, 
and  although  he  made  no  pause  in  going,  he 
never  failed  on  his  return  to  continue  for  a  long 
time  praying  in  the  church.  This  famous 
anecdote  is  a  summary  of  the  interplay  of  love 
and  religion  that  was  characteristic  of  Mar- 
garet's own  mind.  It  sounds  more  edifying 
when  Parlamente  puts  it  in  her  charming  way: 


LADY  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE      209 

"I  believe  no  man  can  ever  love  God  perfectly 
that  has  not  perfectly  loved  one  of  his  creatures 
in  this  world."  That  is  the  sort  of  thing  the 
Queen's  admirers  have  in  mind  when  they  call 
her  a  Platonist.  In  a  delightful  tale  that 
(almost  inadvertently)  celebrates  the  break- 
down of  "Platonic  love,"  in  real  life,  Margaret 
anticipates  the  lady-novelist  of  later  times  in 
framing  the  sort  of  declaration  that  the  lady  is 
always  thirsting  to  hear.  Amadour,  enamoured 
of  a  young  gentlewoman  betrothed  to  a  king's 
son,  addresses  her  thus:  "I  know  that  I  cannot 
marry  you,  and  even  if  I  could,  I  would  not 
do  so  in  the  face  of  the  love  you  bear  him  whom 
I  would  fain  see  your  husband.  And  as  for 
loving  you  with  a  vicious  love  like  those  who 
hope  that  long  service  will  bring  them  a  re- 
ward to  the  dishonour  of  a  lady,  that  is  far  from 
my  purpose.  I  would  rather  see  you  dead  than 
know  that  you  were  less  worthy  of  being  loved, 
or  that  your  virtue  had  diminished  for  the  sake 
of  any  pleasure  to  me.  For  the  end  and  reward 
of  my  service  I  ask  but  one  thing,  namely  that 
you  will  be  so  faithful  a  mistress  to  me  as 
never  to  take  your  favour  from  me,  and  that 
trusting  in  me  more  than  in  any  other,  and 
accepting  from  me  the  assurance  that  if  for 
your  honour's  sake,  or  for  aught  concerning  you, 


210  THE  LADY 

you  ever  have  need  of  a  gentleman's  life,   I 
will  gladly  place  mine  at  your  disposal." 

Unlike  the  Courtier,  the  Heptameron  exhibits 
the  ladies  themselves  doing  a  great  deal  of  the 
talking.  Castiglione's  ladies  are  chiefly  oc- 
cupied in  drawing  out  the  men.  Nor  is  the 
difference  a  merely  accidental  one  between  two 
books.  In  Italy  where  the  Renaissance  was 
autochthonous  it  was  the  work  of  men,  and  the 
lady  fell  in  with  the  current.  In  France  where 
it  was  largely  a  matter  of  importation,  the  lady's 
judgment  and  taste  were  part  of  the  conditions 
that  determined  its  form.  Nor  did  she  let  go 
the  hold  it  offered  her.  During  the  two  suc- 
ceeding centuries  in  which  France  organised 
civilised  life  for  Europe  the  lady  was  assigned 
an  important  role.  She  succeeded  unluckily  in 
identifying  herself  with  a  self-destructive 
social  mechanism,  but  while  it  lasted  her  posi- 
tion was  strong.  She  gathered  up  and  com- 
bined all  that  Christianity,  Teutonism,  courtesy, 
art  and  convention  had  contributed  for  her  bene- 
fit, and  by  their  means  developed  a  type  which 
reminded  Schopenhauer  of  "the  holy  apes  of 
Benares,  who  in  the  consciousness  of  their  sanc- 
tity and  inviolable  position,  think  they  can  do 
exactly  as  they  please." 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  SALON 


"Je  vous  ai  recommande  cent  fois  la  vertu;  mais  n'allez  pas 
attacher  a  ce  mot  une  foule  d'idees  pueriles  et  ridicules.  Je 
ne  reconnais  dans  une  femme  d'autre  sagesse  que  celle  qui 
convient  a  un  honnete  homme."  MADAME  DE  PUYSIEUX,  Con- 
seils  a  Une  Amie. 

TOWARDS  the  end  of  the  reign  of 
Henry  the  Fourth  of  France,  the 
Marquise  de  Rambouillet  built  for  her- 
self a  new  hotel  in  the  Rue  St.  Thomas-du- 
Lovre,  and  placed  her  staircase  in  a  corner  of 
the  building  instead  of  in  the  middle  where  all 
the  world  had  supposed  a  staircase  must  be. 
The  social  significance  of  this  innovation  was 
quickly  seized  and  applied  by  other  ladies. 
When  the  Queen  Mother  built  the  Luxembourg 
she  sent  her  architects  to  look  at  the  Hotel  Ram- 
b6uillet.  Perhaps  the  famous  influence  of 
that  house  upon  French  life  and  letters  would 
have  been  the  same  with  a  central  staircase,  but 
the  genius  that  exerted  the  one  expressed 
itself  not  less  significantly  in  the  abolition  of 
the  other.  The  central  staircase  had  cut  the 
house  in  two,  with  an  enormous  drawing-room 

211 


212  THE  LADY 

on  one  side  and  an  enormous  bedroom  on  the 
other.  No  one  had  conceived  a  less  na'ive  dis- 
tribution. Mme.  de  Rambouillet  took  the 
first  step  towards  the  humanisation  of  the  hotel. 
Many  more  remained  to  be  taken,  but  they  fol- 
lowed inevitably  from  hers.  Having  recovered 
from  the  staircase  the  central  section  of  her 
house,  she  could  arrange  the  whole  floor  in  a 
suite  of  communicating  rooms,  throwing  them 
together  or  separating  them  at  will  by  a  sys- 
tem of  folding-doors  symmetrically  arranged. 
In  working  out  her  main  idea  she  added  some 
highly  agreeable  details,  loftier  ceilings,  larger 
windows  and  a  livelier  scheme  of  decoration. 
Before  her  day  no  one  had  thought  of  painting 
walls  with  any  other  colour  than  red  or  tan; 
she  invented  her  famous  blue  room.  So  much 
of  the  tradition  of  the  donjon  and  its  furniture 
remained  that  the  chief  mobile  feature  of  the 
blue  room  was  the  great  bed  in  its  alcove  which 
the  lady  occupied  to  receive  her  guests, — the  lit 
pare  of  a  hundred  contes  of  the  middle  age. 

Throughout  the  reign  of  Louis  the  Four- 
teenth, this  theory  of  the  house  prevailed,  modi- 
fied of  course  by  the  temperament  of  that 
monarch.  Rooms  grew  larger  and  larger; 
it  was  impossible  to  heat  them  in  winter. 
Furniture  grew  more  and  more  monumental;  it 
was  impossible  to  be  at  ease  in  one's  chair.  In 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  SALON     213 

all  this,  the  changing  aspect  of  the  lady  was  im- 
plied. She  no  longer  sat  upon  the  grass  with 
jolly  Queen  Margaret.  She  was  indeed  even 
after  the  Renaissance  accepted  and  understood 
as  an  object  of  art,  but  the  art  of  the  grand 
monarch  was  architecture,  for  which  the  lady 
was  an  uncongenial  and  even  refractory 
medium.  She  became  portentous.  Her  dress 
was  magnificent,  stiff,  ponderous,  inhuman. 
The  portraiture  of  the  time  shows  her  heroic 
size,  her  hard  Olympian  physiognomy.  The 
passions  she  inspired  were  formidable  and  un- 
wieldy, systematically  developed  and  expressed, 
in  a  word,  baroque. 

There  is  hardly  a  more  striking  instance  in 
the  lady's  history  of  the  reaction  between  her 
and  her  physical  surroundings  than  the  com- 
plete change  in  domestic  architecture  and  art 
that  marked  the  opening  of  the  regency  and  of 
an  age  of  feminism,  at  the  beginning  of  the 
lady's  great  century.  The  dowager  Duchess 
de  Bourbon  built  in  1722  an  hotel  which  em- 
bodied the  new  spirit,  and  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury was  launched.  Pierre  Patti,  an  architect 
of  the  reign  of  Louis  the  Fifteenth  understood 
the  matter  very  well.  "Nothing  does  us  so 
much  honour  as  the  invention  of  the  art  of  dis- 
tributing apartments.  Before  us  the  one  con- 
sideration was  the  exterior  and  magnificence; 


214  THE  LADY 

the  interiors  were  vast  and  inconvenient. 
There  were  drawing-rooms  two  stories  high  and 
spacious  reception-rooms.  .  .  .  All  these 
were  placed  end  to  end  without  detachment. 
Houses  were  solely  for  publicity,  not  for  private 
comfort.  All  the  pleasant  arrangements  that 
we  admire  to-day  in  the  new  hotels,  the  artful 
detachment  of  rooms,  the  concealed  staircases  so 
convenient  for  hiding  an  intrigue  or  avoiding 
importunate  visitors,  those  contrivances  that 
lighten  the  labour  of  servants  and  make  our 
houses  delightful  and  enchanted  dwellings,  all 
these  are  the  invention  of  our  day."  With  the 
smaller  and  more  personal  room,  there  came 
naturally  a  different  theory  of  decoration. 
The  ponderous  disappeared.  The  timbers 
which  used  to  be  allowed  their  decorative  value 
were  hidden  by  ceilings  and  panels.  The 
colossal  was  replaced  by  the  little.  The  statues, 
the  columns,  the  great  canvases  made  way  for 
china  figurines,  for  carven  garlands  and  for 
mirrors.  If  the  gentlemen  of  France  breathed 
more  freely  when  Louis  the  Fourteenth  was 
dead,  the  lady's  emancipation  needs  a  stronger 
figure.  She  was  herself  again ;  powers  had  been 
accumulating  for  her  as  money  accumulates  for 
an  heir  during  his  minority;  her  great  century 
was  before  her;  and  the  first  outward  result  of 
her  action  was  to  diminish  the  scale.  Her 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  SALON     215 

furniture  was  not  henceforward  to  make  her 
look  dwarfed;  she  was  tired  of  the  role  of  an 
ill-executed  caryatid.  The  grandiose  and  the 
symmetrical  had  never  become  her;  her  ardent 
wish  was  to  be  surrounded  with  small  objects 
and  to  get  rid,  as  far  as  possible,  of  things  with 
two  sides  alike. 

The  lady's  history  has  in  all  times  been  re- 
flected and  symbolised  by  that  of  her  garden. 
The  legend  that  associates  our  first  mother  with 
a  natural  garden  and  Demeter  with  the  fruits 
of  the  earth  has  a  meaning  that  deepens  rather 
than  fades  as  the  woman  becomes  a  lady  and 
gardening  becomes  a  fine  art.  In  both  the  lady 
and  the  garden  something  primarily  useful  is 
maintained  unproductively  for  its  aesthetic 
value  alone.  In  each  case  protoplasm  is 
moulded  and  coloured  by  art  like  so  much  wax 
or  plaster.  The  two  creations  are  always  felt 
to  be  akin;  the  lady  is  at  her  best  in  the  garden, 
and  the  garden  is  incomplete  without  the  lady. 
It  represents  the  social  process  that  has  made 
her  possible;  the  exclusion  of  hurtful  influ- 
ences, the  repression  and  modification  of  natural 
forces,  the  pleasant  sense  of  refinement  that 
comes  of  spending  money  and  labour  in  the 
production  of  the  palpably  useless.  The  age 
that  produces  an  incontestably  new  type  of  lady 
is  as  proud  of  it  as  the  gardener  can  be  of  a 


2i6  THE  LADY 

new  double  or  scented  variety.  The  eighteenth 
century  saw  many  startling  vicissitudes  of  gar- 
dening, and  the  ladies  it  produced  were  com- 
parable only  with  the  black  tulip  and  the  blue 
rose.  Art  could  do  no  more. 

The  great  garden  of  the  seventeenth  century 
was  a  man's  garden,  logical,  disciplined,  de- 
rived in  all  its  details  from  one  controlling 
principle,  planned  on  an  enormous  scale. 
Every  gentleman's  lawn  exhibited  a  miniature 
Versailles.  The  politics  and  the  finance  of  the 
reign  were  mirrored  in  its  gardens.  Le  Notre 
and  Colbert  were  but  different  manifestations  of 
the  same  genius.  Their  works  had  the  same 
duty  to  fulfil  toward  their  common  master,  to 
praise  him  and  magnify  him  forever.  It  is 
true  that  Louis  wavered  for  a  moment  between 
Le  Notre's  plan  and  that  of  Dufresney. 
Dufresney  had  designed  for  the  Abbe  Pajot  a 
natural  garden  (as  the  seventeenth  century  con- 
ceived the  natural)  without  a  straight  line 
in  it. 

But  the  King  after  due  consideration  gave  a 
pension  to  Dufresney  and  adopted  the  plan  of 
Le  Notre.  He  perceived  that  the  natural 
garden  would  be  a  contradiction  of  the  spirit 
of  his  reign.  Among  his  subjects  it  had  a  cer- 
tain brief  vogue  and  then  died  out  in  France. 
When  it  revived  there  after  nearly  a  cen- 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  SALON     217 

tury  it  came  in  congenial  company  with  the 
rights  of  man  and  the  maternal  nourishment  of 
infants,  Anglomania  and  the  hankering  after  a 
bicameral  constitution.  But  across  the  channel 
it  was  immediately  adopted  and  was  the  start- 
ing point  of  what  we  know  as  the  English 
garden.  In  the  meantime  the  ideas  of  Le  Notre 
prevailed  in  France.  It  was  an  age  of  long 
reigns.  The  new  hotels  of  the  early  eigh- 
teenth century  preserved  his  formalities,  his  un- 
compromising pursuit  of  a  principle.  It  was 
bound  in  the  long  run  to  go  down  before  Rous- 
seau and  the  return  to  nature,  but  it  began  by 
lending  itself  to  the  first  aims  of  the  simple  life. 
It  was  easy  to  arrange  a  bit  of  bergerie  in  a  cor- 
ner of  a  symmetrical  garden  by  installing  a  terra- 
cotta shepherd  and  shepherdess  and  clipping  the 
box-trees  into  sheep.  Retarded  somewhat  by 
such  adaptations,  the  revolution  nevertheless 
came  at  last.  Men's  politics  expressed  them- 
selves in  their  gardens;  some  were  called  Eng- 
lish and  some  were  called  Chinese,  though  in 
fact  they  looked  very  much  alike.  The  main 
thing  was  to  get  rid  of  symmetry,  which  was 
identified  with  the  old  regime. 

The  lady's  own  personal  appearance  in  the 
eighteenth  century  is  set  before  us  by  excep- 
tionally full  documents.  It  is  true  that  a  cer- 
tain allowance  must  be  made  in  studying  the 


2i8  THE  LADY 

portrait  of  the  lady  in  any  age.  It  is  well 
known  that  she  exerts  a  strong  and  characteristic 
influence  on  every  functionary  who  exists  to 
supply  her  special  wants,  so  that  a  ladies'  doc- 
tor is  readily  distinguishable  from  other 
doctors,  and  the  cashier  in  a  ladies'  bank  from 
other  cashiers.  In  a  much  greater  degree  is  the 
professional  painter  of  ladies'  portraits  dis- 
tinguishable from  other  portrait  painters.  It 
is  only  the  painters  primarily  of  men,  like 
Velasquez  and  Rembrandt,  who  give  us  the 
ladies  of  their  time  in  their  frank  and  engaging 
ugliness.  But  if  the  painter  of  ladies  cannot 
be  trusted  to  tell  us  exactly  how  his  sitters  really 
looked,  he  tells  us  something  far  more  important. 
We  know  a  priori  that  as  far  as  flesh  and  blood 
and  eyes  and  teeth  go,  they  looked  like  their 
counterparts  in  any  age.  What  the  painter 
tells  is  something  we  could  not  have  learned 
from  any  other  source,  and  what  the  lady's 
painter  always  tells,  how,  namely,  the  sitter 
wished  to  look.  Where  the  man's  talent  is  great, 
it  would  perhaps  be  more  just  to  say  that  his 
canvas  shows  how  he  wishes  the  sitter  looked; 
but  his  ideal  and  the  sitter's  are  generally  the 
same.  Her  dress  and  her  jewels  are  sure  to  be 
faithfully  presented;  if  the  length  of  her  legs 
and  the  curve  of  her  lips  are  theoretical,  and  in- 
deed appear  to  be  nearly  uniform  at  any  given 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  SALON     219 

period,  we  are  told  the  truth  at  one  remove,  we 
are  put  in  possession  of  the  ideal  of  a  society. 

One  of  the  briefest  ways  to  describe  the  ideal 
of  a  lady's  appearance  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury is  to  say  that  the  pastel  was  invented  to 
express  it.  Nothing  could  so  conclusively 
stamp  it  a  woman's  century  as  the  rise  and 
prevalence  of  this  medium,  itself  the  invention 
of  a  woman.  The  soft  bloom  of  the  lady's  cheek, 
the  gentle  brilliance  of  her  eyes,  the  light 
luxuriance  of  her  hair,  the  tender  colours  and 
graceful  fabrics  of  her  dress,  the  characteristic 
sentiment  of  her  whole  appearance  are  recalled 
to  us  at  once  by  the  mere  mention  of  the  pastel. 
It  carries  with  it  a  whole  theory  of  manners,  of 
love  and  life.  To  prove  the  degree  to  which  it 
affects  the  imagination,  it  is  necessary  only  to 
study  one  of  Gainesborough's  or  Romney's 
ladies  skilfully  copied  in  pastel  and  to  note  the 
inexplicable  oddity  of  the  transformation.  It 
is  true  that  the  whole  thing  was  manfully 
launched  by  Watteau  in  oils.  That  singular 
genius  doubtless  contributed  more  than  any  one 
man  to  determine  the  lady's  idea  of  herself  until 
she  fell  under  the  even  more  strongly  sugges- 
tive influence  of  Rousseau.  But  the  pastel 
raised  Watteau's  view  of  life  to  the  second 
power.  What  he  contrived  by  a  miracle  to  do 
with  oils  could  be  done  quite  naturally  with 


220  THE  LADY 

pastels.  The  transition  under  the  Regency  from 
the  positiveness  of  the  last  reign  to  the  senti- 
mentalism  of  the  next  is  embodied  in  them. 
The  Goncourts  with  their  agreeable  rhetoric  of 
over-statement  have  expressed  this  change  in  a 
passage  that  cannot  be  forgotten: 

"But  already,"  they  say,  "in  the  midst  of  the 
deities  of  the  Regency  appeared  a  type  more 
delicate,  more  expressive.  A  beauty  quite  dif- 
ferent from  the  beauties  of  the  Palais-Royal  be- 
gins to  make  itself  felt  in  that  little  lady,  whose 
bust-portrait  by  Rosalba  hangs  in  the  Louvre. 
How  charming  is  the  firm  and  slender  grace  of 
this  figure!  The  delicate  complexion  recalls 
the  fairness  of  Saxe  porcelain,  the  black  eyes 
light  up  the  whole  face;  the  nose  is  fine,  the 
mouth  small,  the  neck  slender  and  long.  There 
is  no  show  of  dress,  no  operatic  properties; 
nothing  but  a  bouquet  at  the  breast  and  a  gar- 
land of  natural  flowers  interwoven  with  the 
loose  curls  of  her  hair.  It  is  a  new  grace  mak- 
ing her  appearance,  who  seems,  even  with  the 
little  grimacing  monkey  held  against  her  by  her 
slender  fingers,  to  proclaim  the  irregular  fea- 
tures and  charms  that  were  to  fascinate  the 
century.  Little  by  little,  woman's  beauty  be- 
comes animated  and  refined.  It  is  no  longer 
physical,  material,  brutal.  She  escapes  from 
the  absolutism  of  the  line;  she  steps  out  so  to 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  SALON     221 

speak  from  the  type  in  which  she  was  impris- 
oned and  flashes  with  the  light  of  liberty.  She 
acquires  lightness,  animation,  the  spiritual  live- 
liness which  the  beholder  finds  in  her  face, 
either  in  fancy  or  because  it  is  there.  She  dis- 
covers the  soul  and  the  secret  of  modern  beauty, 
— expression.  Her  depths,  her  reflexions,  her 
smile  come  as  you  gaze  at  her,  her  eye  speaks. 
Irony  lies  at  the  corner  of  her  mouth  and  on 
her  half-opened  lips.  Intelligence  passes  over 
her  face  and  transfigures  it, — palpitating,  trem- 
bling, breathing  intelligence  brings  into  play  all 
those  invisible  fibres  that  transform  a  face  by 
expression,  giving  it  a  thousand  shades  of 
caprice,  working  upon  it  with  the  finest  modu- 
lations, conferring  upon  it  all  sorts  of  delicacies. 
The  intelligence  of  the  eighteenth  century 
models  the  woman's  face  upon  the  masque  of 
the  comedy  of  Marivaux,  so  mobile,  so  finely 
shaded,  so  delicate  and  so  prettily  animated  by 
all  the  coquetry  of  the  heart,  of  charm  and  of 
taste." 

Early  in  the  century  the  ideal  lady  was 
brunette  and  striking;  under  Louis  the  Six- 
teenth she  •  was  blond  and  appealing.  The 
Louis  Quinze  lady  painted  her  lips  and  cheeks, 
not  with  the  hard  conventional  crimson  of  the 
Regency,  but  delicately  and  with  character. 
The  Chevalier  d'Elbee,  who  wished  to  raise  a 


222  THE  LADY 

fund  to  pension  the  wives  and  widows  of  offi- 
cers, proposed  a  tax  on  rouge  for  the  purpose. 
His  pamphlet  states  that  more  than  2,000,000 
pots  were  sold  annually  in  France  at  six  francs 
the  pot.  Towards  the  end  of  the  century  when 
the  lady  became  sentimental  the  use  of  rouge 
diminished  greatly.  She  returned  to  nature,  and 
that  there  should  be  no  mistake  about  her  inten- 
tion, she  sometimes  had  herself  bled  to  secure 
the  pale,  transparent  cheek  of  na'ive  sensibility. 
Watteau  dressed  the  lady  in  the  famous  gar- 
ment which  to  this  day  carries  his  name,  a  great 
robe,  almost  formless,  with  short  full  sleeves, 
falling  behind  in  a  great  double  pleat  or  with 
merely  gathered  fulness  and  trailing  about  the 
wearer.  This  robe  enabled  the  lady  to  reconcile 
the  two  opposing  motives  of  woman's  dress,  con- 
ventional stiffness  and  natural  lines.  For  be- 
neath the  robe  she  wore  a  corset  and  the  petti- 
coat that  was  presently  to  swell  into  a  revival 
of  the  farthingale.  Thus  her  body  was  severely 
outlined  beneath  the  robe,  while  the  robe  itself, 
loose-fitting,  floating,  constantly  detaching  itself 
from  strict  relation  to  the  contours  of  the 
wearer,  made  her  dress  romantic.  This  robe 
endured  with  modifications  until  the  fall  of  the 
monarchy.  As  the  inflations  of  the  farthingale 
proceeded,  the  skirt  of  the  robe  parted  in  front, 
revealing  the  falbala,  a  triangle  of  highly- 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  SALON     223 

ornamented  petticoat.  Presently  the  robe  itself 
was  pressed  into  the  service  of  the  farthingale 
and  gathered  on  either  side  into  the  paniers 
which  are  perhaps  the  best  known  mode  of  the 
age.  Early  in  the  century  the  lady's  hair  was 
dressed  low  and  she  wore  a  little  lace  cap  with 
strings.  Later  her  coiffure  became  portentous. 
The  names  of  Legros  and  Leonard  are  less  cele- 
brated only  than  that  of  John  Law.  The  whole 
history  of  the  century  was  reflected  in  the  lady's 
head-dress  which  became  a  rebus.  Everyone 
has  read  of  the  coiffure  a  la  circonstance  which 
mourned  the  death  of  Louis  XV  with  a  cypress 
behind  and  a  cornucopia  resting  on  a  sheaf  of 
wheat  before;  of  the  bonnet  a  la  Belle-Poule 
which  exhibited  a  frigate  under  full  sail  in 
honour  of  a  naval  engagement  with  the  English ; 
of  the  coiffure  a  la  Mappemonde,  which  dis- 
played on  the  wearer's  head  the  five  divisions  of 
the  known  globe;  and  of  the  bonnet  au  Pare 
Anglais,  with  shrubberies  and  lawns,  rivulets, 
shepherdesses  and  sheep,  and  of  the  coiffure  a 
I' Inoculation  which  represented  small-pox  by 
a  serpent,  medical  science  by  a  club,  and  the 
result  of  their  encounter  by  a  rising  sun  and  an 
olive-tree  in  fruit. 

A  few  years  before  the  Revolution,  all  this 
changed.  The  paniers  were  let  down,  the  far- 
thingale was  abandoned,  high  heels  were  cut 


224  THE  LADY 

off,  the  hair  was  dressed  meagrely  with  a  gar- 
land of  flowers,  muslin  replaced  silk,  the  dress 
was  made  simply,  a  la  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau,  a 
la  Eergere,  or  a  la  Paysanne.  Under  all  these 
disguises  the  lady  remained  the  same,  self-con- 
scious, intelligent,  striving  to  express  herself  or 
at  any  rate  to  express  something.  Of  all  the 
motives  that  lead  mankind  to  wear  clothes  hers 
was  the  most  artificial.  She  dressed  neither  for 
warmth,  nor  for  decency,  nor  in  the  interests 
of  beauty.  Her  motive  was  simply  that  of  the 
actor, — she  dressed  for  her  part. 

II 

THE  difference  between  the  status  of  the 
lady  at  Athens  in  the  fifth  century  be- 
fore Christ  and  her  status  in  France  in 
the  eighteenth  century  of  our  era  is  so  profound 
that  other  social  changes  seem  comparatively 
negligible.  The  status  of  property  had  under- 
gone relatively  little  change.  With  some  modi- 
fications of  terminology,  labour  was  exploited 
as  of  old.  The  functions  of  the  gentleman  were 
approximately  what  they  had  always  been. 
Adam  Smith's  analysis  of  the  economic  com- 
position of  society  revealed  practically  the 
same  constituent  elements  and  motives  as  Plato's. 
The  lady  alone  of  all  classes  of  society  had  sue- 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  SALON     225 

ceeded  in  breaking  her  tabu  and,  while  leav- 
ing her  economic  basis  untouched,  in  altering 
her  social  relations  in  several  fundamental 
directions.  She  retained  what  she  had  origi- 
nally and  added  provinces  on  every  side.  At 
Athens  she  was  allowed  the  dignities  belonging 
to  the  head  of  the  household  on  condition  of 
entire  fidelity  to  her  husband.  In  France  she 
even  strengthened  her  position  in  the  house 
while  no  longer  fulfilling  the  condition.  She 
had  of  o.d  been  a  lady  as  distinguished  from 
a  courtesan;  in  the  eighteenth  century  the  dis- 
tinction had  disappeared  except  as  between 
amateur j  and  professionals.  Her  private  se- 
curity had  of  old  been  connected, — indissolubly 
as  men  supposed — with  her  abstinence  from  pub- 
lic activity;  in  the  later  period  she  strengthened 
her  hand  at  home  by  the  importance  she  gained 
abroad.  But  since  her  economic  position  was 
unchanged,  since  men  were  still  officially  in  con- 
trol and  what  she  enjoyed  was  won  by  favour, 
it  was  necessary  that  all  the  changes  in  her  posi- 
tion should  be  wrought  by  the  connivance  of 
men.  Her  very  great  ability  could  not  proceed 
directly  to  its  goal,  but  must  begin  by  recom- 
mending her  to  men.  She  was  therefore  seated 
in  the  fork  of  a  perpetual  dilemma;  to  gain  her 
ends,  whether  in  politics  or  in  millinery  or  in 
letters,  she  must  cultivate  her  powers,  but  how 


226  THE  LADY 

far  could  she  cultivate  them  without  giving  of- 
fence to  men?  No  one  but  a  Puritan  will  im- 
agine that  to  be  the  mistress  of  a  king  or  a  min- 
ister or  a  savant — to  be  Madame  de  Pompa- 
dour or  Madame  de  Boufflers  or  Mile,  de  Les- 
pinasse — was  a  matter  simply  of  beaux  yeux. 
Such  women  and  hundreds  more  of  the  same 
type  were  possessed  of  talents  so  great  that  if 
they  had  b.een  men  they  would  have  been  men 
of  distinction.  Being  women,  they  had  not  only 
to  be  agreeable  in  a  positive  sense,  but  they  had 
to  draw  a  veil  over  what  might  displease  if 
seen  too  clearly, — over  the  unremitting  intel- 
lectual labour  which  alone  enabled  them  to 
achieve  their  ends.  They  were  permitted  to 
undertake  great  responsibilities  provided  they 
preserved  an  air  of  being  unfit  for  them,  and  to 
present  every  other  evidence  of  genius  provided 
they  dissembled  the  capacity  to  take  infinite 
pains. 

The  education  the  lady  received  in  her  youth 
before  she  took  the  matter  in  hand  herself  was 
not  of  a  sort  to  raise  the  presumption  of  ped- 
antry against  her.  The  convent  was  the  only 
school  and  its  graduates  could  not  always  read 
and  write.  The  four  younger  daughters  of  Louis 
XV  could  not  when  they  were  "finished"  at 
Fontevrault.  Thirty  years  later  the  little  girl 
who  became  Madame  Roland  received  a  favour- 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  SALON     227 

able  impression  at  the  school  of  the  Congre- 
gation, which  was  one  of  the  best  of  its  day. 
The  sister  in  charge  of  instruction  was  an  ob- 
ject of  jealousy  because  of  her  superior  attain- 
ments which  consisted  of  a  beautiful  handwrit- 
ing, skill  with  the  needle,  a  knowledge  of 
orthography  and  some  acquaintance  with  his- 
tory. Thirty-four  pupils  from  six  years  old 
to  eighteen  occupied  a  single  room  and  were 
divided  into  two  classes.  The  ethical  side  of 
the  children's  training  was  open  to  criticism 
as  well  as  the  pedagogical.  Little  penitents 
were  sent  alone  to  pray  in  the  crypt  where  the 
dead  nuns  were  buried.  A  child  of  five  who 
had  committed  a  theft  was  sentenced  to  be 
hanged.  A  block  and  tackle  were  fixed  to  the 
ceiling,  the  felon  was  placed  in  a  clothes-basket 
and  hoisted  up,  while  the  nuns  sang  the  De 
Profundis.  Another  child  cried  "Are  you 
dead?"  "Not  yet,"  replied  the  victim.  Thirty 
years  later  when  one  child  was  the  wife  of  a 
marechal  of  France  and  the  other  a  duchess, 
they  used  smilingly  to  repeat  the  formula  in 
greeting  each  other  in  society.  But  some  little 
girls  acquired  under  such  discipline  the  habit 
of  nervous  terrors  which  was  lifelong.  To 
balance  their  severities,  the  good  sisters  allowed 
the  most  surprising  privileges.  Many  convents 
received  ladies  from  the  world  as  transient 


228  THE  LADY 

guests  and  these  inmates  brought  the  world  with 
them.  Madame  de  Genlis,  shortly  after  her 
marriage,  sojourned  in  a  convent  while  her 
husband  was  absent  on  military  duty.  She  en- 
joyed herself  thoroughly.  The  abbess  used  to 
invite  men  to  dinner  in  her  apartment;  at  the 
carnival,  Madame  de  Genlis  was  allowed  to 
give  in  the  convent-parlour  two  balls  a  week 
attended  by  nuns  and  school  girls;  when  these 
amusements  were  insufficient  she  would  some- 
times rise  at  midnight,  run  about  the  corridor 
in  the  costume  of  the  devil  and  wake  the  nuns 
in  their  cells.  When  she  found  a  sister  very 
sound  asleep  she  would  paint  her  cheeks  and 
affix  a  mouche  or  two.  The  little  girls  were 
often  allowed  free  access  to  the  lady-boarders 
and  listened  with  round  eyes  to  their  tales  of 
life  in  the  world. 

The  hygiene  of  the  early  eighteenth  century 
was  primitive  everywhere,  and  the  convent  was 
not  a  leader  in  reform.  Bathing  was  dis- 
couraged. The  children  sometimes  slept  in 
their  clothes,  either  for  fear  of  the  cold  or  to 
be  able  to  lie  a  few  minutes  longer  in  the  morn- 
ing. They  were  required  to  rise  early,  and  yet 
they  had  no  food  until  nine  o'clock,  although 
the  last  meal  had  been  taken  at  not  later  than 
six  the  night  before.  There  was  apparently  no 
ventilation  in  either  school-room  or  dormitory, 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  SALON     229 

and  no  systematic  open-air  exercise.  The  cor- 
set was  an  article  of  faith,  and  very  careful  con- 
vents required  the  pupil  to  sleep  in  it  lest  the 
good  work  of  the  day  among  her  organs  be 
undone  at  night. 

If  a  little  girl  were  not  sent  to  the  convent 
but  educated  at  home  she  was  not  likely  to  fare 
very  much  better.  If  her  parents  were  thought- 
less, she  grew  up  as  best  she  might;  if  they  were 
thoughtful,  they  were  pretty  sure  to  have  a 
theory  of  education  of  which  the  child  was  to 
be  the  living  vindication.  No  subject  was 
more  congenial  to  the  theorists  of  the  eighteenth 
century;  every  one  had  a  plan  for  the  re- 
generation of  society,  and  every  one  began 
soundly  enough  with  the  training  of  the  child. 
Stephanie-Felicite  Ducrest  de  Saint-Aubin,  who 
was  later  as  Madame  de  Genlis  an  authority  on 
education,  learned  to  read  at  the  age  of  five 
from  the  teacher  of  the  village  school  of  Saint- 
Aubin.  From  her  mother's  maids  she  learned  a 
little  catechism  and  plenty  of  ghost-stories.  At 
the  age  of  seven  she  had  a  governess  and  music- 
mistress,  a  girl  of  sixteen  who  knew  nothing. 
The  curriculum  included  the  catechism,  the 
harpsichord  and  an  abridgment  of  Buffier's 
history.  After  a  few  days,  Buffier  was  found 
dull  and  was  replaced  by  Mademoiselle  Scud- 
ery's  novel  of  Clelie.  Now  Monsieur  de  Saint- 


230  THE  LADY 

Aubin,  her  father,  was  a  scholar  and  a  student 
of  natural  science.  He  was  devoted  to  his  lit- 
tle girl  and  might  have  given  her  a  first-rate 
education.  But  his  hobby  was  to  make  her  a 
"femme  forte/'  and  the  means  he  adopted  was 
to  teach  her  to  handle  spiders  and  frogs  and  to 
keep  pet  mice,  with  a  view  to  putting  her  on 
good  terms  with  creatures  so  often  misunder- 
stood. Her  mother  was  a  poet.  Her  contribu- 
tion to  the  child's  mental  development  was  to 
cause  her  to  learn  and  act  parts  in  comic  opera 
and  in  the  tragedies  of  Voltaire.  She  was  also 
dressed  in  boy's  clothes  and  taught  to  fence.  It 
was  not  until  after  her  marriage  that  she  bravely 
and  successfully  undertook  her  own  education. 
Apart  from  the  bizarreries  of  her  experience  it 
was  the  general  lot.  The  cultivated  women 
who  organized  and  dominated  a  highly  intel- 
lectual society  had  no  education.  Madame  du 
Deffand  learned  nothing  at  her  convent;  Mad- 
ame Geoffrin  never  mastered  the  art  of  spelling. 
The  most  obvious  inference  is  somewhat  damag- 
ing to  education.  Is  not  the  great  mental 
energy  of  these  women,  their  good  judgment, 
their  sound  taste,  their  indefatigable  love  of 
letters,  evidence  of  the  advantage  enjoyed  by 
minds  unjaded  by  routine? 


Madame  Du  Deffand  and  the  Duchesse  de  Choiseul. 

From   the   painting   formerly   at   Strawberry   Hill. 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  SALON     231 

III 

THE  circumstances  which  worked  to- 
gether to  bring  the  lady  to  her  climax 
in  France  in  the  eighteenth  century 
were  of  a  very  much  more  general  character 
than  the  education  of  the  individual.  The 
value  that  we  attach  to  education  is  part  of  the 
democratic  theory  of  life  which  swept  the  lady 
off  her  feet  at  the  end  of  her  great  century. 
The  aristocratic  theory  of  life,  which  was  of 
necessity  hers,  has  never  laid  great  stress  upon 
education.  Scholarship  may  be  a  gentleman's 
hobby,  but  in  a  truly  aristocratic  age  no  very 
large  number  of  gentlemen  will  be  educated. 
The  discipline  involved  in  education  as  we  un- 
derstand it  is  repugnant  to  the  gentleman's  in- 
stincts and  indeed  to  some  extent  destructive 
of  his  qualities  which  should  be  of  an  arbitrary 
and  idiosyncratic  character.  Such  instruction 
as  he  receives  should  logically  be  imparted  to 
him  in  solitude ;  nothing  is  so  likely  as  the  pur- 
suit of  knowledge  in  the  company  of  others  to 
widen  the  gentleman's  sympathies,  to  expose 
him  to  unprejudiced  competition  and  to  stand- 
ardise his  mind  unless  it  be  really  original. 
But  all  these  processes  are  inimical  to  his  type. 
Even  less  is  education  helpful  to  the  lady.  To 
insist  upon  educating  her  is  practically  to  re- 


232  THE  LADY 

quire  her  to  be  something  other  than  she  has 
been.  Her  own  demand  for  education  in  the 
nineteenth  century  was  one  of  the  most  striking 
fruits  of  the  democratic  movement. 

The  fundamental  occasion  of  the  great  ef- 
florescence of  the  lady  under  Louis  the  Fif- 
teenth was  the  peculiar  social  temper  of  the 
French,  rinding  free  play  in  favourable  ex- 
ternal conditions,  which  had  been  developing 
ever  since  the  days  of  Louis  the  Eleventh.  The 
lady's  acknowledged  importance  as  a  factor  in 
civilised  social  life  is  plainly  noted  in  the  tales 
and  by-play  of  the  Heptameron.  If  her  prog- 
ress was  interrupted,  the  interruption  was  due 
to  the  relapse  into  barbarism  known  as  the  wars 
of  religion.  These  once  over,  the  lady's  future 
was  assured;  she  had  but  to  take  her  own. 
Even  Louis  the  Fourteenth  could  not  suppress 
her.  The  French  sense  of  solidarity  made  her 
essential  to  the  social  scheme,  and  the  century 
which  in  England  developed  the  coffee-house 
and  Dr.  Johnson  developed  in  France  the  salon. 

The  art  of  the  saloniere  is  in  its  nature  un- 
susceptible of  comparative  criticism,  like  that 
of  the  actress.  Just  as  we  have  to  accept  our 
grandfathers'  decision  in  regard  to  the  genius 
of  Rachel,  so  we  must  infer  what  we  may  from 
the  enthusiasm  of  her  contemporaries  concern- 
ing the  charm  of  Mademoiselle  de  Lespinasse. 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  SALON     233 

It  is  a  somewhat  striking  fact  that  the  portraits 
of  the  most  famous  salonieres  show  them — even 
through  the  good-will  of  the  artist — as  plain. 
Madame  Geoffrin's  portentous  ugliness,  the  ir- 
regularity of  Mademoiselle  de  Lespinasse,  the 
chinoiserie  of  Madame  de  Tencin,  the  an- 
gular features  of  Madame  du  Deffand,  are  an 
enduring  proof  of  their  power.  But  it  would  be 
a  bold  woman  who  should  argue  from  their 
example  that  to  be  plain  and  to  have  no  educa- 
tion are  in  themselves  the  basis  of  social  suc- 
cess. 

One  result  of  the  lady's  lack  of  education  was 
her  restriction  to  the  field  of  action  which  is 
always  most  congenial  and  easiest  to  her,  the 
field  of  personal  influence.  She  had  plenty  of 
ideas  but  she  could  not  express  them  imperson- 
ally. 

The  men  of  the  eighteenth  century  were 
throwing  off  with  amazing  facility  works  of 
novel  content  and  imperishable  form;  they  were 
affecting  each  other  and  the  world  at  large  in 
an  almost  unexampled  way  by  pure  reason 
made  digestible  by  the  vehicle  of  style.  Rous- 
seau, for  instance,  the  dominating  influence  of 
his  time,  had  the  least  possible  capacity  for  deal- 
ing personally  with  the  world.  His  impas- 
sioned vanity,  his  exaggerations,  his  injustice, 
his  credulities  and  misfortunes,  are  such  as  we 


234  THE  LADY 

think  of  as  belonging  in  general  to  the  temper- 
ament of  women.  In  fact,  it  will  be  seen  that 
he  differed  from  the  typical  lady  of  his  day 
almost  as  much  in  temperament  as  in  the  power 
of  sustained  production.  It  is  true  that  after 
his  day  the  lady  tended  somewhat  to  reproduce 
his  type  and  under  his  influence  to  become  ro- 
mantic. But  the  ladies  who  were  his  con- 
temporaries had  precisely  and  for  good  reasons 
the  personal  qualities  that  he  lacked.  Their 
vanity  was  without  passion,  for  it  was  without 
illusions.  The  simplicity,  the  need  of  appro- 
bation, the  na'ive  sensibility  that  made  him  so 
gullible  were  incompatible  with  the  lady's  ex- 
perience of  life.  His  genius  could  play  only  in  a 
world  of  illusions,  hers  only  in  the  cold  white 
light  of  psychological  analysis.  A  man  whose 
function  was  merely  to  write  great  books  could 
do  so  with  his  eyes  closed;  the  lady  whose  suc- 
cess in  life  was  to  consist  in  exploiting  him  was 
compelled  to  keep  hers  open.  Her  first  busi- 
ness was  to  understand  herself,  her  second  to 
understand  her  world.  Nothing  is  more  sur- 
prising to  the  Anglo-Saxon,  who  believes  in 
unpremeditated  art,  than  the  fact  that  beauty 
is  not  necessary  to  make  a  Frenchwoman  se- 
ductive. The  power  of  mind  when  applied  to 
the  science  of  being  agreeable  is  something  of 
which  he  has  very  little  conception.  His 


Julie  de  Lespinasse. 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  SALON     235 

women  have  an  amour  propre  which  forbids 
them  to  try  to  please.  The  admiration  they 
excite  without  trying  is  the  only  kind  they  value. 
Both  man  and  woman  are  almost  inaccessible  to 
the  motive  of  which  Montesqieu  says:  "Ce 
desir  general  de  plaire  produit  la  galanterie, 
qui  n'est  point  I'amour,  mats  le  delicat,  mats 
le  leger,  mais  le  perpetuel  mensonge  de 
I' amour" 

The  French  lady  of  the  eighteenth  century 
on  the  other  hand  aimed  to  please  as  whole- 
heartedly as  a  grocer  aims  to  sell  cabbages. 
Her  enthusiasm  often  carried  her  to  the  length 
of  pleasing  her  husband.  Her  intimate  man- 
friends  she  pleased  without  too  much  trouble, 
and  she  was  very  careful  to  please  her  woman- 
friends  as  well.  In  the  political  world  the 
women  (Montesqieu  says)  all  had  relations  with 
each  other  and  formed  a  sort  of  republic,  a 
state  within  the  state,  the  members  of  which 
were  always  active  in  mutual  good  offices.  But 
the  lady  counted  these  steps  as  but  preliminary; 
she  was  a  failure  unless  she  pleased  all  her 
world.  It  is  a  somewhat  discouraging  fact 
that  if  she  is  to  give  a  great  deal  of  pleasure, 
the  lady  must  not  in  general  be  impetuously 
affectionate.  She  must  not  care  for  people  to 
the  extent  of  failing  to  understand  them  or  to 
act  on  her  understanding.  A  tough,  unenthus- 


236  THE  LADY 

iastic  good-nature,  like  that  of  Madame  Geof- 
frin  is  an  excellent  basis  for  her  activities. 
Madame  Geoffrin  was  endlessly  kind  to  many 
people;  but  her  most  famous  saying,  which 
Count  de  Schomberg  called  sublime,  shows 
other  qualities.  She  offered  thirty  thousand 
francs  to  Rulhiere  to  destroy  or  even  to  ex- 
purgate his  scandalous  manuscript  on  Russia. 
Rulhiere  turned  upon  her  with  indignation  at 
the  idea  that  a  historian  could  be  bribed  to  sup- 
press the  truth  as  he  saw  it.  "Well,"  said 
Madame  Geoffrin,  "how  much  more  do  you 
want?"  An  invincible  good  sense  was  the  com- 
panion of  the  essential  good  humour,  and  be- 
tween them  they  left  little  reason  for  folly. 
The  lady  could  give  sound  advice  on  any  prac- 
tical subject;  one  counselled  a  young  man  "to 
make  friends  among  women  rather  than  among 
men,  for  through  the  women  you  can  manage 
the  men.  Also  some  men  are  too  dissipated  and 
the  rest  are  too  much  preoccupied  with  their 
own  affairs  to  attend  to  yours,  but  the  women  will 
give  real  thought  to  them  if  only  because  they 
have  nothing  else  to  do.  But  when  you  have 
singled  out  the  women  who  can  be  useful  to 
you,  take  care  you  don't  make  love  to  them." 
Another  listened  to  the  comedy  of  a  young 
friend,  and  made  this  comment  for  his  benefit: 
"At  your  age  it  is  possible  to  write  good  verses 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  SALON     237 

but  not  a  good  comedy;  that  is  the  product  not 
only  of  talent  but  of  experience.  You  have 
studied  the  drama,  but,  luckily  for  you,  you 
have  not  yet  had  time  to  study  the  world. 
Portraits  cannot  be  painted  without  models. 
Frequent  society  where  the  ordinary  man  sees 
nothing  but  faces,  the  man  of  talent  discovers 
physiognomies.  And  do  not  imagine  that  you 
must  live  in  the  great  world  to  know  it;  look 
about  you  and  you  will  perceive  that  it  contains 
the  vices  and  follies  of  all  classes.  At  Paris 
above  all  the  stupidities  and  perversities  of 
the  great  are  rapidly  reproduced  in  lower  cir- 
cles, and  perhaps  it  is  even  better  for  the  comic 
author  to  study  them  there  because  they  are 
there  shown  more  artlessly  and  unrelieved.  In 
every  age  manners  have  a  character  of  their  own 
which  must  be  seized.  Do  you  know  what  is 
the  most  distinguished  trait  of  our  manners  to- 
day?" The  young  man  suggested  that  it  was 
gallantry.  "No,"  said  his  monitress,  "it  is 
vanity." 

The  ladies  of  the  court  of  Francis  the  First 
delighted  in  a  sort  of  erotic  mysticism  that  in- 
cluded both  sacred  and  profane  love.  Love 
and  religion  were  interwoven  in  an  emotion  not 
too  clearly  analysed.  The  ladies  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  had  no  illusions  about  either,  and 
one  of  them  expressed  thus  her  notion  of  the  re- 


238  THE  LADY 

lation  between  them.  "You  must  never  tell 
your  lover  that  you  do  not  believe  in  God.  As 
to  your  husband,  it  doesn't  matter.  But  with 
a  lover  you  must  always  keep  a  retreat  open, 
and  a  religious  scruple  can  end  a  love-affair  at 


once." 


To  suppose  that  the  life  of  the  saloniere  con- 
sisted in  giving  pleasant  parties  is  to  mistake  the 
flower  for  the  root  and  the  branch.  The  force 
of  these  strong  and  gifted  ladies  showed  itself 
everywhere  where  personal  influence  can  count, 
that  is  throughout  the  field  of  social  relations. 
The  ablest  of  all  had  a  controlling  voice  in  the 
affairs  of  the  state,  instructed  ambassadors,  de- 
termined the  fate  of  ministers.  The  very  des- 
patches of  the  time  show  a  feminine  style  and 
abound  in  "mots  de  ruelle."  Cardinal  de  Ten- 
cin  and  the  Duke  de  Choiseul  expressed  the 
wills  of  Madame  de  Tencin  and  the  Duchess  de 
Gramont.  Madame  de  Langeac  could  com- 
mand lettres  de  cachet,  Mademoiselle  Renard 
could  create  general  officers,  Mademoiselle 
Guimard  could  distribute  benefices.  The  sur- 
est way  into  the  Academy  was  through  a  lady's 
recommendation;  the  success  of  a  play,  a  poem, 
a  picture,  a  philosophy,  depended  upon  her. 
The  lady  is  the  sturdy  oak,  the  man  of  genius 
the  clinging  vine;  Madame  de  Luxembourg 
protects  Rousseau,  Madame  de  Richelieu  pro- 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  SALON     239 

tects  Voltaire;  Madame  de  Choiseul  protects  the 
Abbe  Barthelemy;  Mademoiselle  de  Lespinasse 
protects  de  Guibert. 

It  was  not  until  the  middle  of  the  century 
that  the  diffused  feminism  of  the  age  crystal- 
lised in  the  salon.  The  great  ladies  of  the 
Regency  chose  other  modes  of  activity  and  the 
lesser  ladies  were  still  oppressed  by  the  tradi- 
tion of  Versailles  with  its  doctrine  of  social  cen- 
tralisation. A  work  called  Reflexion  nou- 
velles  sur  les  Femmes,  par  une  Dame  de  la 
Cour,  published  in  1727,  complains  of  the  lack 
of  reasonable  intercourse  and  looks  back  with 
regret  to  the  days  of  the  Hotel  de  Rambouillet 
and  its  Platonic  conversations.  Slowly  as  the 
century  advanced  a  lady  ventured  here  and  there 
to  institute  a  weekly  supper-party.  One  by  one 
the  houses  were  built  that  were  to  make  private 
entertainments  possible.  In  exactly  the  middle 
of  the  century  the  lady  who  had  formerly  been 
Madame  de  Boufflers  and  had  recently  become 
the  Marechale  de  Luxembourg  founded  the 
salon  which  while  remaining  for  fifty  years  the 
most  famous  of  its  class  furnished  inspiration 
for  the  opening  of  many  more.  The  Marechale 
gave  regularly  two  suppers  a  week;  but  these 
were  the  least  of  her  cares.  It  was  plain  to  her 
that  she  must  have  a  man  of  acknowledged 
parts  as  her  chief  attraction  and  she  fixed  upon 


24o  THE  LADY 

the  Comte  de  Bissy  as  the  man.  The  steps  by 
which  she  secured  the  count  will  serve  as  well 
as  another  example  to  illustrate  the  thorough- 
ness of  the  lady's  methods.  In  the  first  place, 
she  persuaded  her  friend  the  Duchess  de  la 
Valliere  to  dismiss  an  old  admirer  and  instal  de 
Bissy  in  his  place.  But  unwilling  to  rely  on  a 
sentimental  claim  alone,  she  contrived  through 
the  influence  of  Madame  de  Pompadour  to  have 
de  Bissy  admitted  to  the  Academy.  In  return 
for  these  various  values  received,  the  count  be- 
came the  official  wit  of  the  Marechale's  salon. 

It  was  in  that  one  house  as  much  as  anywhere 
that  the  theory  and  practice  of  good  society 
were  brought  to  perfection,  under  the  formative 
influence  of  the  lady.  The  Goncourts  in  their 
enthusiasm  declare  that  the  lady  furnished  a 
glimpse  of  heaven  to  a  godless  age:  "la  femme 
arrive  a  etre  pour  le  dix-huitieme  siecle,  non- 
seulement  le  dieu  de  bonheur,  du  plaisir,  de 
I'amour,  mats  I'etre  poetique,  I'etre  sacre  par 
excellence,  le  but  de  toute  elevation  morale, 
I' ideal  humain  incarne  dans  un  sexe  de 
rhumanite."  To  admit  these  statements  is  to 
accept  the  Frenchman's  view  of  life,  to  believe 
that  agreeable  social  relations  are  the  noblest 
thing  our  race  has  achieved,  and  that  the  con- 
ception of  manners  formulated  in  the  salon,  and 


c   u 

,0   J 

cl     « 
C/J    J 

• 


.S 

E  a. 


<   S 
.      o 

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THE  LADY  OF  THE  SALON     241 

modified  but  not  destroyed  by  the  Revolution, 
remains  the  basis  of  civilised  existence.  This 
view  of  life,  however  little  accepted  by  peoples 
of  Teutonic  blood,  is  one  to  which  the  lady 
everywhere  secretly  or  openly,  unconsciously  or 
even  despite  herself,  inclines.  Not  only  she, 
but  women  in  general,  are  best  off  in  a  highly 
artificial  society.  We  have  come  to  realise  that 
the  equality  of  opportunity  which  was  the  de- 
sideratum of  the  early  friends  of  woman's  in- 
dustrial advancement  is  not  enough.  The 
working-woman  must  have  a  special  situation 
created  for  her  if  society  is  to  get  the  utmost 
from  her  that  she  can  do.  In  unrestricted  com- 
petition with  men  she  comes  to  grief  and  the 
race  is  injured.  In  primitive  social  conditions 
therefore  she  is  bound  to  go  to  the  wall.  Hence 
the  working-woman  as  well  as  the  lady  has  an 
instinct  that  favours  a  conventional  as  op- 
posed to  a  natural  social  situation.  Their  in- 
terests are  it  is  true  essentially  opposed,  but  they 
agree  in  shrinking  from  the  nai've  law  of  force. 
The  lady  is  the  product  of  man's  earliest  aes- 
thetic desires,  and  it  is  her  business  in  every 
way  to  foster  these.  It  is  only  among  peoples 
who  easily  and  naturally  rise  to  the  conception 
of  life  as  an  art  that  she  is  able  to  attain  her  full 
growth,  and  her  classic  claim  to  measure  the 


242  THE  LADY 

civilisation  of  a  nation  by  the  degree  of  perfec- 
tion in  which  it  produces  the  lady  is  to  this  ex- 
tent and  in  this  sense  valid. 

The  lady  of  the  salon  formulated  this  art  of 
life  in  a  very  high  spirit  and  called  it  "politesse." 
Its  principles  were  historically  derived  from 
those  which  Marie  de  Champagne  and  her 
friends  had  dictated  to  the  world  through  the 
literature  of  courteous  love;  but  these  had  been 
profoundly  modified.  The  knight  was  gone, 
and  the  lady  was  emancipated.  In  the  social 
struggle  she  fought  with  the  same  weapons  and 
the  same  chance  of  success  as  her  lord.  Instead, 
therefore,  of  two  codes  of  conduct  for  the  sexes 
with  love  as  the  only  common  ground,  politesse 
was  as  nearly  as  possible  the  same  for  both  sexes. 
The  primary  division  of  society,  one  may  say, 
was  not  into  male  and  female,  but  into  polite 
and  rude.  Of  this  distinction,  the  lady  was 
absolute  judge;  the  salon  was  the  assembly 
of  the  elect  and  without  there  was  weeping 
and  gnashing  of  teeth.  The  spectacle  of  French 
politesse  in  full  swing  had  elements  both  of 
fascination  and  of  terror  for  the  English  mind. 
It  is  interesting  to  watch  its  reaction  upon  for 
instance  Horace  Walpole,  who  at  home  so  often 
felt  himself  but  an  indifferent  Englishman. 
Like  all  other  arts,  the  art  of  life  made  a  strong 
appeal  to  Walpole,  but  he  could  stand  only  a 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  SALON     243 

limited  amount  of  it.  His  individualism  was 
fretted  by  the  constant  implication  of  reference 
to  an  absolute  standard,  and,  good  Whig  though 
he  was,  he  was  too  strongly  aristocratic  by 
temperament  to  be  at  home  in  the  most  aristo- 
cratic society  in  the  world.  Though  a  kindly 
man  and  a  gentleman  he  reserved  the  right  as 
an  Englishman  of  distinction  to  be  rude  if  he 
liked.  And  it  shocked  him,  whom  so  little 
could  shock,  to  hear  the  propositions  of  philos- 
ophy bandied  about  as  table-talk.  He  dearly 
loved  to  talk  to  ladies  but  not  on  serious  topics, 
even  if  they  were  treated  flippantly.  His  re- 
lation with  Madame  du  Deffand  is  one  of  the 
drollest  as  well  as  one  of  the  most  touching  of 
international  episodes.  Her  powers  and  charms 
were  of  the  sort  to  be  irresistible  to  him ;  he  felt 
as  profoundly  as  a  Frenchman  could  do  the  value 
of  her  friendly  intercourse  as  a  criticism  of  life. 
But  he  never  mastered  the  feeling  that  as  an 
Englishman  he  was  making  a  fool  of  himself. 
Who  in  England  could  understand  his  attach- 
ment for  an  old  woman?  His  friends  would 
reason  that  either  he  was  in  love  with  her  or  he 
was  not,  and  that  if  anything  could  be  more 
ridiculous  than  a  love  affair  with  an  old  woman, 
it  was  a  strong  and  abiding  interest  in  a  woman 
with  whom  one  was  not  in  love.  Politesse  was 
not  so  thoroughly  understood  by  his  countrymen 


244  THE  LADY 

as  to  make  the  matter  intelligible  to  them.  One 
of  the  things  indeed  that  Walpole  was  forever 
commenting  on  in  French  society  was  its  accept- 
ance of  women  no  longer  young.  The  lady's 
riper  age  is  generally  a  very  difficult  question. 
When  she  is  really  old  the  matter  is  compara- 
tively simple;  if  circumstances  put  power  in  her 
hands  she  can  be  a  magnificent  and  formidable 
phenomenon.  If  nature  has  been  kind  to  her 
physically  she  can  assume  the  frail  and  exquisite 
grace  of  a  china  mantle-ornament.  If  she  is 
neither  powerful  nor  lovely  she  must  occupy 
herself  with  giving  as  little  trouble  as  possible. 
These  various  courses  are  practically  dictated 
to  her  by  circumstances.  But  the  years  of 
transition  present  a  real  problem,  and  in  the 
solution  the  lady  of  the  salon  showed  her  genius. 
She  had  never  allowed  mere  physical  beauty  to 
have  things  all  its  own  way,  as  it  has  always 
had  them  in  England.  In  suffering  plain 
women  gladly,  the  most  lovely  kept  open  her 
own  retreat;  a  society  accustomed  to  other  than 
bodily  charms  would  not  notice  their  decay. 
The  lady  never  achieved  a  more  striking  tour  de 
force  than  in  her  triumph  over  the  primitive 
instinct  of  man  in  favour  of  change  and  youth. 
In  the  eighteenth  century  she  kept  her  lovers 
long; — no  picture  of  the  time  is  complete  with- 
out an  ancient  marquise  and  an  ancient  count, 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  SALON     245 

united  by  tender  recollections, — and  she  kept 
society  as  long  as  she  lived.  As  a  sheer  triumph 
of  spirit  over  flesh,  she  might  well  regard  her 
work  as  the  highest  point  in  the  civilisation  she 
was  ever  striving  to  impose  upon  man. 

The  admirers  of  politesse  are  wont  to  remind 
us  that  it  furnished  in  a  godless  age  an  excellent 
imitation  of  most  of  the  Christian  virtues.  If 
you  were  bent  on  hurting  your  neighbour's 
feelings,  politesse  compelled  you  to  do  so  in  the 
most  considerate  way.  If  you  were  intent  on 
outshining  your  dearest  friend  as  a  hostess,  you 
could  do  so  only  by  exhibiting  more  completely 
than  she  the  power  of  self-effacement  which 
would  enable  the  egotism  of  your  guests  to  ex- 
pand and  flower.  If  you  wished  to  convict  a 
rival  of  vulgarity  you  must  outdo  him  in  mag- 
nanimity. Physical  and  moral  courage  were 
matters  of  course.  To  lose  your  temper  was  as 
gross  a  social  fault  as  to  drink  from  your  finger- 
bowl.  In  England  the  higher  your  rank,  the 
more  people  you  might  scold.  In  France  as 
you  ascended  the  social  scale  your  possibilities 
of  abuse  became  more  and  more  confined,  and 
the  most  distinguished  never  allowed  themselves 
to  be  excited  at  all.  The  root  of  all  these 
virtues  was  a  self-esteem  which  has  always 
fascinated  even  those  of  mankind  who  are 
temperamentally  unfit  to  entertain  it.  It  is  the 


246  THE  LADY 

final  expression  of  man's  protest  against  nature 
and  against  fate.  It  is  the  motive  that  upheld 
Prometheus.  More  timid  spirits  watch  its  man- 
ifestations with  the  fearful  joy  entertained  by 
little  boys  when  a  big  boy  defies  the  schoolmaster. 
It  does  in  the  moral  world  what  art  does  in  its 
own, — opposes  the  will  and  judgment  of  man 
to  the  crudity  and  incoherence  of  the  natural 
order.  It  satisfies  one  of  the  most  deeply  seated 
of  human  instincts,  the  instinct  to  impose  form 
on  confusion.  The  immortal  charm  of  the 
old  regime  is  witness  to  the  sense  of  relief  with 
which  the  restless  modern  spirit  sees  the  whole 
of  life  relentlessly  based  on  a  principle,  right 
or  wrong,  for  which  its  entertainers  are  pre- 
pared to  undergo  the  final  disaster.  The  fate 
of  an  early  Christian  virgin  and  martyr  makes 
a  touching  story,  but  we  understand  that  her 
reward  was  so  immediately  before  her  eyes  that 
the  intermediate  step  looked  short  to  her  and 
therefore  may  to  us.  It  is  a  very  different  and 
more  tonic  appeal,  an  appeal  that  throws  us 
back  upon  whatever  there  be  of  stoicism  and 
self-reliance  in  our  own  breasts,  that  is  made  to 
us  when  the  lady  of  the  salon  affixes  her  last 
mouche  and  makes  her  toilette  for  the  guillo- 
tine. 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  BLUE  STOCKINGS 

"The  calamities  of  an  unhappy  marriage  are  so  much  greater 
than  can  befal  a  single  person,  that  the  unmarried  woman  may 
find  abundant  argument  to  be  contented  with  her  condition." 
MRS.  CHAPONE,  On  the  Improvement  of  the  Mind. 

MGASTON  PARIS  tells  us  that  we 
are  to  infer  from  Geoffrey  of  Mon- 
*  mouth's  account  of  the  court  of 
Arthur  that  the  England  of  Henry  the  Second 
was  the  home  of  manners.  Prowess  and  cour- 
tesy were  there  inseparable  and  life  became 
polite.  With  the  exception  of  this  purely  ex- 
otic and  imported  exhibition  of  the  art  of  life, 
it  cannot  be  said  that  English  history  reveals 
any  noticeable  practice  of  politeness  except  for 
a  brief  time  and  under  special  conditions  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  when  it  was  again  imposed 
from  abroad  by  the  overwhelming  genius  of  the 
neighbour  nation.  Politeness  is  not  the  natural 
expression  of  Teutonic  social  instincts  because  it 
implies  at  one  remove  what  the  Teuton  prefers 
to  express  directly.  It  is  the  natural  expression 
of  the  social  instincts  of  people  of  lively  wits 
who  actually  prefer  to  think  of  two  things  at 
once.  It  makes  life  a  perpetual  game  of 

247 


248  THE  LADY 

whist  instead  of  a  game  of  cricket.  An  exact 
analogy  to  the  Teutonic  theory  of  social  inter- 
course is  to  be  found  in  Herbert  Spencer's  theory 
of  literary  style.  The  aim  of  the  written  word, 
according  to  his  well-known  exposition,  is  to 
convey  the  writer's  meaning  to  the  reader  with 
the  least  possible  draught  on  the  attention  of 
the  latter;  nothing  must  distract  him,  no  ir- 
relevancies  must  waste  his  nervous  force,  the 
different  parts  of  speech  must  be  fed  to  him  in 
mathematical  relation  to  his  needs,  as  though 
he  were  a  model-baby  or  a  type-setting  machine. 
The  result  of  this  theory  as  practised  by  the  ex- 
pounder of  it  is  that  the  active-minded  reader 
has  not  enough  to  think  about  to  keep  him  busy. 
Mere  words  and  especially  long  Latin  ones  can- 
not be  presented  with  sufficient  rapidity  by  the 
eye  to  keep  the  brain  supplied.  The  reader  of 
Herbert  Spencer  is  practically  driven  to  do 
something  else  at  the  same  time,  to  pat  a  dog  or 
to  listen  to  a  conversation  in  the  next  room,  in 
order  to  keep  his  faculties  occupied.  The  Eng- 
lish-speaking peoples  have  in  general  been 
nurtured  on  so  generous  a  diet  of  abounding 
and  satisfying  literary  style,  that  they  readily 
perceive  the  defect  in  Spencer's  practice,  how- 
ever much  his  theory  may  strike  them  as  ra- 
tional; but  they  often  find  it  hard  to  realise  that 
what  they  need  in  literature  on  pain  of  feeling 


LADY  OF  THE  BLUE  STOCKINGS  249 

empty,  other  peoples  more  used  to  purely  intel- 
lectual diversions  need  throughout  the  social 
relations.  To  state  the  matter  in  the  simplest 
terms,  there  are  two  ways  of  proving  your 
superiority  if  a  man  in  a  crowd  speaks  rudely 
to  you;  one  is  to  knock  him  down  and  the  other 
is  not  to.  The  first  method  has  several  advan- 
tages ;  it  is  unambiguous  and  it  is  intelligible  to 
all.  The  second  method  is  ambiguous;  it  may 
as  easily  mean  that  you  are  afraid  as  that  you 
are  superior,  and  it  is  intelligible  only  to  those 
who  understand  the  rules  of  the  game.  The 
first  method,  it  need  hardly  be  said,  is  felt,  what- 
ever else  it  may  be,  to  be  "English."  The  sec- 
ond method,  though  freely  practised  by  sophis- 
ticated Englishmen,  is  an  acquisition.  It  sub- 
stitutes for  the  demonstrable  superiority  of  the 
biceps  a  superiority  which  rests  on  abstract 
consideration,  and  it  therefore  compels  thought. 
The  common  consent  of  civilisation  has  imposed 
certain  limits  on  the  Teutonic  theory  of  social 
intercourse,  so  that  although  most  so-called 
Anglo-Saxons  are  still  conscious  of  the  instinct 
to  hit  out,  many  of  them  have  it  more  or  less 
under  control.  They  are  as  far  as  ever,  how- 
ever, from  accepting  the  general  theory  that  life 
is  more  amusing  if  many  of  its  acts  mean  two 
things  at  once.  Good  manners  are  for  them  a 
set  of  rules,  not  a  principle  of  spontaneous  ac- 


250  THE  LADY 

tion.  They  still  cherish  the  theory  that  a  good 
measure  of  a  man's  social  importance  is  the 
number  of  people  to  whom  he  may  with  im- 
punity be  rude.  Nothing  is  more  striking  to  an 
outlander  who  watches  an  Englishman  on  his 
way  up  in  the  world  than  to  note  from  year  to 
year  the  added  number  of  minutes  that  he  ven- 
tures to  keep  people  waiting.  Of  course,  what 
the  Englishman  relies  on  to  temper  the  dynamic 
way  of  conducting  social  relations  is  the  ex- 
cellence of  his  heart.  He  thinks  of  himself  as 
a  kindly  giant.  What  can  any  society  have  bet- 
ter in  the  way  of  atmosphere  than  "fair  play?" 
In  his  eyes,  it  may  even  be  said,  uniform  good 
manners  are  an  admission  on  the  part  of  the 
owner  that  he  is  not  perfectly  sure  of  his  posi- 
tion in  society.  Moreover,  they  actually  limit 
the  field  of  action  of  a  naturally  generous 
temper.  Where  all  are  polite,  how  is  the  kindly 
man  to  make  himself  known?  He  is  no  better 
than  any  one  else  and  might  as  well  not  be  kindly 
at  all.  One  of  the  reasons  for  the  chronic  pass- 
ing of  the  lie  between  the  French  and  the  Eng- 
lish is  their  lack  of  sympathy  on  this  question. 
The  Englishman  argues  that  to  exhibit  habitu- 
ally a  suavity  beyond  what  human  nature  is  cap- 
able of  entertaining  is  dishonest  The  French- 
man raises  an  eyebrow  at  the  notion  of  an  excel- 
lence of  heart  which  is  apparently  most  natu- 


LADY  OF  THE  BLUE  STOCKINGS  251 

rally  expressed  by  an  easy  disregard  of  the  feel- 
ings of  others. 

This  matter  which  forms  so  curious  a  spectacle 
for  the  impartial  outsider  is  one  of  profound 
importance  for  the  lady.  The  strength  of  her 
position  waxes  and  wanes  with  the  shifting  im- 
portance of  manners.  When  they  reach  their 
climax,  as  in  the  eighteenth  century  in  France, 
so  does  she.  As  she  gains  influence  she  uses  it 
to  make  manners  prevail,  but  she  cannot  of  her- 
self originate  an  atmosphere  congenial  to  them. 
The  proposition  is  generally  stated  in  the  other 
sense,  but  it  seems  truer  to  say  that  manners 
make  the  lady  than  that  the  lady  makes  manners. 
Such  at  any  rate  is  the  conclusion  to  be  drawn 
from  a  vigorous  effort  made  by  certain  ladies  of 
England,  taking  advantage  of  a  temporary  na- 
tional enthusiasm  for  manners,  to  break  through 
the  social  limitations  of  their  sex  and  induce 
men  to  accept  their  social  value  as  the  same  as 
that  of  the  ladies  of  France. 

It  was  to  the  ladies  of  France  that  the  ladies 
of  England  naturally  looked  for  lessons  in  the 
social  art.  A  little  work  translated  from  the 
French  and  called  The  Art  of  Being  Easy  at  all 
Times  and  in  all  Places,  written  chiefly  for 
the  use  of  a  Lady  of  Quality,  was  a  popular 
manual  in  many  English  homes.  Good  Mrs. 
Chapone,  in  writing  to  her  niece  those  wonder- 


252  THE  LADY 

ful  Letters  on  the  Improvement  of  the  Mind, 
which  were  the  gospel  of  the  new  sect,  was  swift 
to  admit  that  the  young  lady  will  probably  real- 
ise that  politeness — "this  delightful  qualifica- 
tion, so  universally  admired  and  respected  but 
so  rarely  possessed  in  any  eminent  degree," — is 
not  among  her  natural  endowments.  It  belongs 
by  nature  only  to  very  quick-witted  people. 
"To  be  perfectly  polite,"  says  Mrs.  Chapone, 
"one  must  have  great  presence  of  mind,  with  a 
delicate  and  quick  sense  of  propriety;  or  in 
other  words  one  should  be  able  to  form  an  in- 
stantaneous judgment  of  what  is  fittest  to  be 
said  or  done,  on  every  occasion  as  it  offers.  I 
have  known  one  or  two  persons  who  seemed  to 
owe  this  advantage  to  nature  only,  and  to  have 
the  peculiar  happiness  of  being  born  as  it  were 
with  another  sense,  by  which  they  had  an  im- 
mediate perception,  of  what  was  proper  and 
improper,  in  cases  absolutely  new  to  them;  but 
this  is  the  lot  of  very  few;  in  general  propriety 
of  behaviour  must  be  the  fruit  of  instruction, 
of  observation  and  reasoning;  and  is  to  be  culti- 
vated and  improved  like  any  other  branch  of 
knowledge  or  virtue."  Without  counting,  then, 
on  any  great  natural  aptitude,  the  English  lady 
set  to  work  with  grammar  and  dictionary  to 
learn  to  be  easy  at  all  times  and  in  all  places. 
But  though  manners  were  to  be  the  found- 


LADY  OF  THE  BLUE  STOCKINGS  253 

ation  of  the  new  movement,  the  lady  was  not 
to  depend  upon  their  charm  alone.  Her  con- 
versation was  to  have  a  solid  value;  it  should 
be  possible  for  ladies  to  converse  together  to 
their  entertainment  and  profit  without  the  up- 
lift of  men's  presence.  There  was  a  respect- 
able if  apologetic  tradition  in  England  in  the 
seventeenth  century  that  women  were  as 
susceptible  of  education  as  men.  Men's  parts 
being  cultivated  and  refined  by  learning  and 
the  arts  are  like  an  enclosed  piece  of  common, 
(said  Dr.  Allestree  in  The  Ladies  Calling) 
which  by  industry  and  husbandry  becomes  a 
different  thing  from  the  rest,  but  the  natural 
turf  owned  no  such  inequality.  Queen  Eliza- 
beth and  Lady  Jane  Grey  were  doubtless  largely 
responsible  for  the  gentility  allowed  to  learning 
in  ladies,  though  it  was  more  often  explicitly 
attributed  to  Sappho  and  Cornelia,  who  were 
even  more  undeniably  acquainted  respectively 
with  Greek  and  Latin.  Towards  the  end  of 
the  seventeenth  century  a  work  was  published 
by  a  Mrs.  Makin  with  the  title  An  Essay  to  re- 
vive the  Ancient  Education  of  Gentlewomen  in 
Religion,  Manners,  Arts  and  Tongues:  With  an 
Answer  to  the  Objections  against  this  way  of 
Education.  As  the  title  implies,  the  argument 
rests  on  the  assumption  that  at  some  time  past 
women  were  the  recipients  of  a  strenuous  and 


254  THE  LADY 

liberal  education.  The  reader's  interest  is  stim- 
ulated to  enquire  whether  the  author  has  in 
mind  the  ladies  of  the  twelfth  century  who  pat- 
ronised the  literature  of  courteous  love,  or  the 
learned  nuns  of  centuries  before  the  twelfth. 
It  turns  out,  however,  that  her  reference  is  more 
remote  and  the  education  she  proposes  to  revive 
is  that  bestowed  upon  the  Sibyls.  Her  histor- 
ical summary  leaps  in  fact  from  ancient  Rome 
to  Lady  Jane  Grey  and  the  "present  Duchess 
of  Newcastle."  After  protesting  against  "the 
barbarous  custom  to  breed  women  low,"  and 
proposing  a  better  course,  Mrs.  Makin  adds  a 
postscript  to  her  essay:  "If  any  enquire  where 
this  education  may  be  performed,  such  may  be 
informed  that  a  school  is  lately  erected  for 
Gentlewomen  at  Tottenham  High  Cross,  within 
four  miles  of  London,  on  the  road  to  Ware, 
where  Mrs.  Makin  is  governess,  who  was  form- 
erly tutoress  to  the  Princess  Elizabeth,  daughter 
to  King  Charles  the  First."  According  to  the 
prospectus  of  Mrs.  Makin's  school,  half  the  time 
was  to  be  spent  in  dancing,  music,  singing,  writ- 
ing and  keeping  accounts.  "The  other  half  to 
be  employed  in  gaining  the  Latin  and  French 
tongues ;  and  those  that  please  may  learn  Greek 
and  Hebrew,  the  Italian  and  Spanish:  in  all 
which  this  Gentlewoman  hath  a  competent 
knowledge. 


LADY  OF  THE  BLUE  STOCKINGS   255 

"Gentlewomen  of  eight  or  nine  years  old  that 
can  read  well  may  be  instructed  in  a  year  or 
two  (according  to  their  parts)  in  the  Latin  and 
French  tongues. 

"Repositories  also  for  Visibles  shall  be  pre- 
pared: by  which,  from  beholding  the  things, 
Gentlewomen  may  learn  the  Names,  Natures, 
Values  and  Use  of  Herbs,  Shrubs,  Trees,  Min- 
eral-pieces, Metals  and  Stones. 

"Those  that  please  may  learn  Limning,  Pre- 
serving, Pastry  and  Cookery. 

"Those  that  will  allow  longer  time  may  attain 
some  general  knowledge  in  Astronomy,  Geog- 
raphy, but  especially  in  Arithmetic  and  His- 
tory." 

The  reader  cannot  but  recall  the  programme 
with  which,  as  Miss  Wirt  assured  Mr.  Snob, 
she  and  her  young  charges  managed  to  "pass 
the  days  at  the  Evergreens  not  unpleasantly." 

Mrs.  Makin's  school  was  successful,  gave 
rise  to  imitators  and  helped  to  fortify  the  tradi- 
tion of  the  learned  gentlewoman.  Here  was 
educated  Elizabeth  Middleton,  the  mother  of 
Mrs.  Edmund  Montagu,  the  chief  of  the  Blue- 
Stockings,  who  may  thus  fairly  be  considered 
the  product  at  one  remove  of  Mrs.  Makin's 
system.  But  apart  from  this  concrete  instance 
of  its  effect,  it  is  fair  to  take  it  as  a  point  of 
departure  because  nothing  could  so  well  illus- 


256  THE  LADY 

trate  the  fundamental  difference  between  the 
methods  of  the  English  lady  and  those  of  her 
model,  the  lady  of  France.  The  French  lady 
made  herself  a  highly  cultivated  person.  The 
knowledge  of  letters  and  history  possessed  by 
such  a  woman  as  Madame  du  Deffand  is  some- 
thing that  cannot  be  matched  in  England  at  all 
as  far  as  the  records  go;  but  she  had  no  idea 
of  posing  as  the  possessor  of  scholarship.  She 
knew  very  well  that  no  greater  handicap  can 
be  attached  to  the  power  of  woman  to  please 
than  the  reputation,  whether  well-founded  or 
not,  of  possessing  exact  information.  It  is  true 
that  an  honest  man  may  be  successful  under 
democratic  institutions,  and  in  the  same  sense 
a  learned  woman  may  be  successful  in  society; 
but  in  each  case  much  more  ability  is  required 
than  if  the  qualification  did  not  exist.  In  the 
eighteenth  century  there  was  no  machinery  in 
either  France  or  England  for  turning  out 
really  learned  women.  Mrs.  Makin's  establish- 
ment could  hardly  do  for  girls  what  Oxford 
was  doing  for  their  brothers;  the  French  lady 
was  saved  by  her  discretion  and  by  her  sense  of 
humour  from  any  attempt  to  compete  with 
men.  Appreciation  and  suggestion  were  her 
weapons.  She  could  not,  it  is  true,  know  too 
much  for  their  skilful  exercise,  but  she  made 
no  pretensions.  She  achieved  results  and  left 


LADY  OF  THE  BLUE  STOCKINGS  257 

others  to  comment  on  them.  She  began  with 
the  practice  of  social  success,  leaving  posterity 
to  derive  the  theory  from  her  chefs-d'oeuvre,  as 
it  does  in  the  case  of  the  sculpture  of  the 
Greeks.  But  the  English  lady  began  by  a 
somewhat  defiant  announcement  of  her  pre- 
tensions. It  may  easily  have  seemed  to  her 
that  it  was  safer  in  view  of  the  unpromising 
state  of  English  society,  which  certainly  did 
not  demand  the  salon,  to  pursue  learning  for 
its  own  sake  in  order  to  have  something  to 
show  for  her  exertions  in  case  the  social  re- 
sult was  meagre.  The  difference  is  a  profound 
one;  it  is  connected  with  the  sturdy  preference 
of  the  Englishwoman  for  standing  on  her  own 
feet,  and  both  are  part  of  the  individualism 
of  her  race  which,  uncongenial  to  an  age  of 
manners,  blossomed  out  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury in  a  variety  of  striking  types  under  con- 
ditions that  left  the  French  lady  nowhere. 
The  methods  that  led  to  success  when  pursued 
by  Florence  Nightingale  and  Octavia  Hill 
were  inapplicable  to  the  problem  and  condi- 
tions of  the  eighteenth  century.  It  was  the 
avowed  intention  of  the  ladies  who  became 
know  as  the  Blue-Stockings  to  supplant  card- 
playing  by  conversation;  but  they  approached 
card-playing  as  though  it  were  a  gun-shot 
wound  or  a  congested  tenement  district. 


258  THE  LADY 

Neither  right  reason  nor  acts  of  Parliament 
could  effect  the  reform  they  had  in  view. 
Nothing  could  do  it  but  charm,  and  the  mea- 
sure of  charm  they  were  able  to  exert  was  of 
a  sort  to  attract  only  those  who  were  of  their 
way  of  thinking  already. 

There  was  one  aspect  of  life  in  England  in 
the  eighteenth  century  that  was  favourable  to 
the  ambitious  lady.  This  aspect  was  the  re- 
sult of  the  unexampled  personality  of  politics. 
The  Hanoverian  monarchs  systematised  a 
feminism  at  court  which,  though  na'ive  and 
coarse,  in  comparison  with  the  analogous  phe- 
nomenon in  France,  was  something  to  be  taken 
into  account  by  ministers.  The  career  of  Lord 
Hervey,  who  was  selected  by  Sir  Robert  Wai- 
pole  for  the  explicit  purpose  of  managing  the 
queen,  is  a  salient  case  by  which  to  estimate 
the  shift  of  things  since  that  day.  Walpole 
was  a  statesman  of  a  very  high  order,  yet 
among  the  objects  of  his  solicitude  the  proper 
manipulation  of  the  queen  ranked  with  the 
excise  and  questions  of  war  or  peace. 
The  politics  of  the  generations  succeeding  his 
as  reflected  in  the  letters  of  his  son  were  full 
of  the  same  element  of  personal  influence,  often 
feminine.  Here  was  an  opening  for  the  sort  of 
activity  in  which  the  English  lady  has  always 
excelled,  and  by  virtue  of  which  she  may  be 


LADY  OF  THE  BLUE  STOCKINGS  259 

said  to  have  developed  a  type  of  her  own, 
surviving  to  the  present  day.  The  English- 
woman of  rank  and  fortune,  trained  from  the 
cradle  as  if  for  the  profession  of  diplomacy,  in 
the  use  of  foreign  tongues  and  the  discussion  of 
the  questions  of  the  day,  discreet,  sensible,  and 
full  of  responsibility,  contrives  to  make  the 
best  of  her  national  characteristics.  She  does 
not  trade  on  her  personal  charm,  being  far  re- 
moved from  the  necessity  to  do  so,  and  in  the 
interest  of  the  greater  game,  she  often  forgets 
the  question  of  her  own  vanity.  The  lady  of 
the  eighteenth  century  had  not  yet  reached  this 
stage;  it  was  not  yet  permitted  her  to  be 
thoroughly  businesslike.  The  age  and  the 
tradition  of  her  class  still  required  a  certain 
amount  of  folly  to  cloak  her  seriousness.  She 
was  generally  of  a  different  stamp  altogether 
from  the  learned  lady.  There  occurred,  how- 
ever, in  the  first  half  of  the  century  a  combina- 
tion of  shrewd  ability  for  the  personal  sort  of 
politics,  of  strong-minded  folly  and  of  the 
penchant  for  learning  which  furnished  an  in- 
structive study  of  all  these  qualities.  This 
combination  was  Lady  Mary  Pierrepont,  bet- 
ter known  as  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu. 
"When  I  was  young,"  she  said  in  later  life,  "I 
was  a  great  admirer  of  Ovid's  Metamorphoses, 
and  that  was  one  of  the  chief  reasons  that  set 


26o  THE  LADY 

me  upon  the  thoughts  of  stealing  the  Latin 
language.  Mr.  Wortley  was  the  only  person 
to  whom  I  communicated  my  design,  and  he 
encouraged  me  in  it.  I  used  to  study  five  or 
six  hours  a  day  for  two  years  in  my  father's 
library;  and  so  got  that  language  whilst  every- 
body else  thought  I  was  reading  nothing  but 
novels  and  romances."  The  extraordinary 
run-away  match  between  a  dull,  methodical 
young  gentleman  and  a  vivacious  young  lady, 
where  the  misgivings  were  all  on  his  side  and 
the  impetuosity  all  on  hers,  the  gradual  col- 
lapse of  the  interest  in  Ovid  and  indeed  of  all 
common  ground,  and  the  final  separation  are 
all  good  comedy.  But  the  real  interest  in  her 
case,  based  on  the  evidence  of  her  voluminous 
letters,  lies  in  her  great  ability,  thwarted  and 
wasted,  but  unmistakable.  Having  incurred 
the  enmity  of  Pope  and  the  dislike  of  Horace 
Walpole,  her  chief  reporters,  Lady  Mary  has 
come  down  to  us  as  the  dissipated  shrew  of  the 
one  and  as  the  eccentric  untidy  old  woman  of 
the  other.  But  she  was  for  twenty-five  years 
one  of  the  beauties  and  wits  of  London,  giving 
and  taking  the  best  that  the  society  of  her  time 
afforded.  Her  letters  show  the  keenness  with 
which  a  clever  woman  could  read  the  personal 
side  of  public  affairs.  There  was  a  whole  field 
of  politics  in  which  great  matters  were  rooted, 


Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu. 

From   an    engraving   by   J.    HopwooJ.    after   the    portrait   by    F.    Zincke. 


LADY  OF  THE  BLUE  STOCKINGS  261 

and  which  could  still  be  cultivated  by  persons, 
both  men  and  women,  who  had  no  pretensions 
to  statesmanship  or  to  a  knowledge  of  political 
economy.  How  much  more  favourable  this 
condition  of  things  was  to  the  lady's  participa- 
tion in  politics  than  the  present  prevalence  of 
business  methods  requiring  the  laborious 
mastery  of  detail,  hardly  needs  to  be  pointed 
out.  It  was  the  most  stimulating  possibility 
her  time  had  for  her.  Apart  from  this  possi- 
bility, restricted  in  the  nature  of  things  to  a 
few  persons  exceptionally  placed  in  the  world, 
society  could  offer  hardly  any  triumphs  to  the 
lady  save  a  year  or  two  of  notoriety  as  a  reign- 
ing toast.  The  public  against  which  the  Blue- 
Stockings  organised  their  attempt  was  as  dif- 
ficult as  participants  in  a  forlorn  hope  could 
desire. 

If  we  look  into  the  eighteenth  century  in 
England  through  two  or  three  of  the  very  dif- 
ferently placed  windows  opened  for  us  by  con- 
temporary accounts,  we  find  the  social  land- 
scape, however  varied,  agreeing  in  one  marked 
contrast  to  the  French.  Neither  Horace 
Walpole  nor  Dr.  Johnson  wanted  ladies'  society 
as  it  was  understood  in  France.  Horace  Wal- 
pole went  frequently  to  Paris;  the  best  friend 
of  his  middle  life  was  an  old  French  lady;  he 
had  at  home  an  almost  absurd  air  of  French 


262  THE  LADY 

urbanity  and  the  highly  polished  exterior  which 
is  generally  deprecated  as  un-English.  But  he 
was  not  for  nothing  a  connoisseur.  He  could 
put  up  with  culture  in  a  French  lady;  her  views 
of  life  and  letters  he  found  undeniably 
valuable  as  well  as  delightful.  But  he  could 
not  put  up  with  what  the  English  lady  pre- 
sented to  him  under  that  name.  The  political 
English  lady  he  suffered  gladly,  Lady  Hervey 
or,  on  a  different  plane,  Lady  Ossory.  But 
when  Mrs.  Miller  established  her  poetic  vase  at 
Batheaston,  his  joy  was  of  the  sort  that  springs 
from  the  sense  of  humour.  "Mrs.  Miller,"  says 
he,  "is  returned  a  beauty,  a  genius,  a  Sappho, 
a  tenth  Muse,  as  romantic  as  Mademoiselle  de 
Scuderi,  and  as  sophisticated  as  Mrs.  Vesey. 
They  have  introduced  bouts-rimes  as  a  new 
discovery.  They  hold  a  Parnassus  fair  every 
Thursday,  give  out  rhymes  and  themes,  and  all 
the  flux  and  quality  of  Bath  contend  for  the 
prizes.  A  Roman  vase,  decked  with  pink  rib- 
bons and  myrtle,  receives  the  poetry,  which  is 
drawn  out  every  festival.  Six  judges  of  these 
Olympic  games  retire  and  select  the  brightest 
compositions,  which  the  respective  successful 
acknowledge,  kneel  to  Mrs.  Calliope,  kiss  her 
fair  hand  and  are  crowned  by  it  with  myrtle, 
with — I  don't  know  what.  You  may  think  this 
a  fiction  or  exaggeration.  Be  dumb,  un- 


LADY  OF  THE  BLUE  STOCKINGS  263 

believers  I  The  collection  is  printed,  published, 
— yes,  on  my  faith!  there  are  bouts-rimes  on  a 
buttered  muffin  by  her  Grace  the  Duchess  of 
Northumberland,  receipts  to  make  them  by 
Corydon  the  Venerable,  alias  George  Pitt; 
others,  very  pretty,  by  Lord  Palmerston  .  .  . 
many  by  Mrs.  Miller  herself,  that  have  no  fault 
but  wanting  metre." 

Dr.  Johnson  who,  as  far  as  the  evidence 
goes,  had  seen  none  of  the  contents  of  the 
famous  vase,  dealt  with  it  a  priori  in  his 
favourite  manner.  "Bouts-rimes,"  said  he,  "is 
a  mere  conceit,  and  an  old  conceit  now;  I  won- 
der how  many  people  were  persuaded  to  write 
in  that  manner  for  this  lady?"  I  named  a 
gentleman  of  his  acquaintance  who  wrote  for 
the  vase.  Johnson.  "He  was  a  blockhead  for 
his  pains."  Boswell.  "The  Duchess  of  North- 
umberland wrote."  Johnson.  "Sir,  the  Duch- 
ess of  Northumberland  may  do  what  she 
pleases:  nobody  will  say  anything  to  a  lady  of 
her  high  rank.  But  I  should  be  apt  to  throw 
's  verses  in  his  face." 

Both  Walpole  and  Johnson  preferred  con- 
versation to  cards,  or  in  fact  to  any  other  occu- 
pation whatever,  but  neither  cared  to  talk 
seriously  to  women.  Each  was  the  centre  of 
such  a  group  as  in  France  would  have  been 
gathered  about  a  lady.  Other  men  served  as 


264  THE  LADY 

similar  nuclei.  Dr.  Burney  and  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds  were  really  dangerous  rivals  to  the 
quadrille-table.  But  a  party  of  men  and 
women  was  a  mechanical  mixture,  tending  con- 
stantly to  resolve  itself  into  its  elements.  Mrs. 
Carter  describes  such  a  party.  "As  if  the  two 
sexes  had  been  in  a  state  of  war,  the  gentlemen 
ranged  themselves  on  one  side  of  the  room, 
where  they  talked  their  own  talk,  and  left  us 
poor  ladies  to  twirl  our  shuttles  and  amuse  each 
other  by  conversing  as  we  could.  By .  what 
little  I  could  hear,  our  opposites  were  discours- 
ing on  the  old  English  poets,  and  this  subject 
did  not  seem  so  much  beyond  a  female  capacity, 
but  that  we  might  have  been  indulged  with  a 
share  in  it." 

If  so  little  encouragement  was  held  out  to  the 
lady  by  the  avowedly  intellectual  society  of  her 
time,  she  had  even  less  prospect  of  success 
among  the  more  commonplace.  We  see  the 
eighteenth  century  in  England  a  little  too  ex- 
clusively through  the  medium  of  the  wits. 
The  tincture  of  French  manners  introduced  by 
the  cosmopolitan  part  of  society  has  served  to 
give  the  time  in  the  retrospect  a  general  air  of 
distinction  and  urbanity.  To  correct  this 
notion,  it  is  necessary  only  to  read  a  novel 
written  by  a  young  lady  in  good  society,  which 
was  at  once  acclaimed  by  her  contemporaries 


LADY  OF  THE  BLUE  STOCKINGS  265 

as  a  piece  of  convincing  realism.  It  was  the 
truth  of  Evelina  that  carried  its  readers  by 
storm,  and  we  may  accept  it,  since  they  did,  as 
a  faithful  picture  of  the  life  of  the  times.  But 
the  life  it  pictures  is  one  of  an  almost  incred- 
ible crudity.  The  extraordinary  carelessness 
of  Evelina's  various  chaperons  which  allowed 
her  to  fall  into  one  equivocal  situation  after  an- 
other is  rendered  doubly  culpable  by  the  char- 
acter of  the  society  to  which  she  was  exposed. 
Mr.  Level's  immunity  from  chastisement  and 
Sir  Clement  Willoughby's  unquestioned  posi- 
tion in  the  world  are  phenomena  much  more 
startling  than  the  vulgarity  of  the  shopkeeping 
Branghtons.  What  an  odd  conception  of 
social  responsibility  must  have  enabled  Mr. 
Villars,  while  deploring  his  ward's  misadven- 
tures, to  tolerate  her  absence  from  him  for  the 
sake  of  her  "prospects"  from  her  grandmother! 
One  would  think  that  the  lightest  of  Eve- 
lina's mortifications  would  have  brought  the 
old  gentleman  up  to  town  by  the  next  coach. 
The  young  lady's  own  contributory  negligence 
is  not  the  least  noteworthy  moral  phenomenon. 
But  the  really  striking  inference  from  the  facts 
presented  is  the  universal  prevalence  of  bad 
manners.  Madame  Duval  of  course  exists 
merely  for  the  sake  of  hers,  but  what  is  there  to 
choose  between  the  vocabulary  and  the  regard 


266  THE  LADY 

for  others  of  the  ex-barmaid  and  of  Captain 
Mirvan,  the  gallant  officer,  the  man  of  family, 
and  the  husband  of  the  most  delicate-minded  of 
her  sex?  Captain  Mirvan  with  the  connivance 
of  Sir  Clement  Willoughby  plans  a  practical 
joke  on  Madame  Duval,  who  is  at  the  time  an 
inmate  of  his  own  house.  She  is  decoyed 
abroad  by  a  false  rumour  of  the  danger  of  a 
friend;  her  carriage  is  waylaid  by  imitation 
highwaymen ;  she  is  dragged  forcibly  along  the 
road  with  many  bumps  and  shakes  and  left  in 
a  ditch  with  her  feet  tied  together.  This  little 
pleasantry  is  comparable  with  Tony  Lumpkin's 
jest  of  jolting  his  mother  and  another  lady  to  a 
jelly  and  finally  depositing  them  in  a  horse- 
pond.  Both  Goldsmith  and  Miss  Burney  de- 
lighted their  audience  with  these  feats.  "How 
true  and  how  delightful"  said  contemporary 
criticism.  When  Evelina's  fortunes  begin  to 
mend  and  she  is  moving  in  the  best  society,  she 
does  not  encounter  greater  tenderness  of  heart. 
Apart  from  the  insolence  of  the  great — for  in 
.England  noblesse  permet  rather  than  oblige — 
the  brutal  scene  in  which  Lord  Merton  and 
Mr.  Coverly  settle  their  wager  by  setting  two 
old  women  to  run  a  foot  race  fairly  raises  the 
gorge.  When  we  turn  from  such  pastimes  to 
the  doings  of  Mrs.  Miller  and  her  friends,  the 


LADY  OF  THE  BLUE  STOCKINGS   267 

Roman  vase  with  its  pink  ribbons  appears  as 
the  symbol  of  humanity  and  civilisation. 

The  reason  why  the  ladies  who  strove  to 
soften  the  manners  of  their  age  were  called 
"bluestockings"  is  still  so  far  shrouded  in  ob- 
scurity as  to  be  a  promising  subject  for  a  doc- 
toral dissertation.  But  they  themselves  had  no 
doubts  on  the  subject;  they  did  not  derive  their 
name  from  the  calze  turchine  of  the  Venetian 
Renaissance,  or  from  any  French  mode. 
Madame  d'Arblay  gives  an  explicit  derivation 
which  is  corroborated  by  Boswell.  "To  begin," 
says  she,  "with  what  still  is  famous  in  the  annals 
of  conversation,  the  Bas  Bleu  Societies.  The 
first  of  these  was  then  in  the  meridian  of  its 
lustre,  but  had  been  instituted  many  years 
previously  at  Bath.  It  owed  its  name  to  an 
apology  made  by  Mr.  Stillingfleet  in  declining 
to  accept  an  invitation  to  a  literary  meeting  at 
Mrs.  Vesey's,  from  not  being,  he  said,  in  the 
habit  of  displaying  a  proper  equipment  for  an 
evening  assembly.  *Pho,  Pho,'  cried  she,  with 
her  well-known  yet  always  original  simplicity, 
while  she  looked  inquisitively  at  him  and  his 
accoutrements:  'don't  mind  dress!  Come  in 
your  blue  stockings  1'  With  which  words, 
humorously  repeating  them  as  he  entered  the 
apartment  of  the  chosen  coterie,  Mr.  Stilling- 


268  THE  LADY 

fleet  claimed  permission  for  appearing,  accord- 
ing to  order.  And  these  words  ever  after  were 
fixed  in  playful  stigma  upon  Mrs.  Vesey's 
associations."  A  correspondent  of  Mrs.  Mon- 
tagu's writes  her  that  a  common  acquaintance 
"swears  he  will  make  out  some  story  of  you  and 
Stillingfleet  before  you  are  much  older;  you 
shall  not  keep  blue  stockings  at  Sandleford  for 
nothing."  Mrs.  Montagu  herself  writes  of 
Stillingfleet  '"I  assure  you,  our  old  philosopher 
is  so  much  a  man  of  pleasure,  he  has  left  off 
his  old  friends  and  his  blue  stockings  and  is  at 
operas  and  other  gay  assemblies  every  night." 
It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  soul  of  Mr.  Stilling- 
fleet derives  from  the  immortality  thrust  upon 
him  by  this  derivation  a  degree  of  pleasure 
compensatory  for  some  of  the  ill-luck  of  his 
life.  He  was  the  disinherited  grandson  of  the 
Bishop  of  Worcester;  he  drank  the  cup  of  mor- 
tification as  a  subsizar  at  Cambridge;  and  his 
ladylove  jilted  him  after  a  ten  years'  courtship. 
His  lifelong  poverty  which  as  he  said  was  "a 
specific  for  some  passions,"  inspired  him  with 
a  gentle  pessimism  which  gave  him  a  flavour. 
He  readily  became  the  mild  wit  of  the  ladies' 
parties,  standing  in  the  same  ratio  to  d'Alem- 
bert  as  Mrs.  Vesey  to  Mademoiselle  de  Les- 
pinasse.  His  poem  on  the  Art  of  Conversation 
deals  chiefly  like  the  Decalogue  in  prohibitions. 


Mrs.  Thrale. 

From    the   picture    by    Sir   Joshua    Reynolds   in    the   possession    of    Samuel 
Bodington,  Esq. 

See  p.  ij(t 


LADY  OF  THE  BLUE  STOCKINGS  269 

Mrs.  Vesey  and  Mrs.  Montagu  were  the  chiefs 
of  the  Blue-Stockings,  and,  differing  widely 
in  temperament  and  method,  agreed  only  in 
aim.  They  were  expositors  of  two  different 
theories  of  the  Evening  Party.  Mrs.  Montagu 
was  for  organisation;  she  arranged  her  guests 
in  a  semi-circle,  after  the  method  of  the 
Duchess  of  Urbino  and  Madonna  Emilia  in  the 
sixteenth  century.  "The  lady  of  the  castle," 
says  Madame  d'Arblay,  "commonly  placed  her- 
self at  the  upper  end  of  the  room,  near  the 
commencement  of  the  curve,  so  as  to  be 
courteously  visible  to  all  her  guests;  having  the 
person  of  highest  rank  or  consequence  properly 
on  one  side,  and  the  person  most  eminent  for 
talents  sagaciously  on  the  other;  or  as  near  to 
her  chair  and  her  converse  as  her  favouring  eye 
and  a  complacent  bow  of  the  head  could  invite 
him  to  that  distinction."  There  seems  to  be  no 
doubt  that  in  Mrs.  Montagu's  mind  the  duties 
of  the  hostess  closely  resembled  those  of  the 
schoolmistress.  It  was  she  who  suggested  the 
topic,  controlled  the  discussion,  called  upon  this 
guest  or  that  for  an  expression  of  opinion,  and 
finally  summed  up  with  the  dogmatic  finality  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  If  she  was  sometimes  a 
little  afraid  of  her  class  so  that  "her  liveliest 
sallies  had  a  something  of  anxiety  rather  than 
of  hilarity — till  their  success  was  ascertained  by 


270  THE  LADY 

applause,"  this  was  but  natural  seeing  that  such 
persons  as  Horace  Walpole  and  Dr.  Burney 
were  among  the  pupils. 

Mrs.  Vesey  on  the  other  hand  was  an  advocate 
of  laissez  faire.  Her  fears  were  so  great  of 
"the  horror,"  as  it  was  styled,  "of  a  circle," 
from  the  ceremony  and  awe  which  it  produced, 
that  she  pushed  all  the  small  sofas  as  well  as 
chairs  pell-mell  about  the  apartments  so  as  not 
to  leave  even  a  zig-zag  path  of  communication 
free  from  impediment.  Mrs.  Vesey's  freedom 
from  a  didactic  aim  was,  however,  but  a  nega- 
tive virtue;  her  friends  liked  her  but  it  does  not 
appear  that  they  came  to  her  house  either  to 
listen  to  her  or  to  talk  to  her;  they  came  to  talk 
to  each  other.  It  was  sufficient  satisfaction  to 
her  that  they  came  at  all.  Less  successful  was 
the  excellent  Mrs.  Chapone.  She  too  "had  her 
coteries,  which  though  not  sought  by  the  young 
and  perhaps  fled  from  by  the  gay  were 
rational,  instructive  and  social;  and  it  was  not 
with  self -approbation  that  they  could  ever  be 
deserted."  The  appeal  to  the  conscience  which 
would  perhaps  suggest  itself  to  no  hostess  in 
the  world  outside  of  England  and  New  Eng- 
land, was  re-enforced  when  the  lady  had  means 
by  the  appeal  to  hunger.  Mrs.  Montagu  and 
Mrs.  Thrale  supplied  notoriously  good  food. 
Dr.  Johnson  himself  understood  the  force  of  the 


LADY  OF  THE  BLUE  STOCKINGS  271 

lower  motive:  "I  advised  Mrs.  Thrale,  who 
has  no  card-parties  at  her  house,  to  give  sweet- 
meats and  such  good  things  in  an  evening  as  are 
not  commonly  given,  and  she  would  find  com- 
pany enough  to  come  to  her;  for  everybody  loves 
to  have  things  which  please  the  palate  put  in 
their  way  without  trouble  or  preparation." 

If  the  conversation-parties  of  the  Blue- 
Stockings  be  contrasted  with  those  of  the  ladies 
of  France  they  are  felt  at  once  to  be  relatively 
poor  things.  They  are  middle-class,  bornee, 
provincial.  The  fundamental  difficulty  is  that 
conversation  is  an  art,  and  if  the  Anglo-Saxon 
at  large  has  some  difficulty  in  producing  and 
appreciating  art,  the  Anglo-Saxon  female  feels 
the  difficulty  more  acutely.  The  end  of  art  is 
unquestionably  pleasure,  but  pleasure  is  a  term 
that  rouses  the  suspicions  of  the  British  matron. 
Even  at  the  present  day  when  the  derision  of 
the  world  has  driven  her  to  acknowledge  "art" 
as  one  of  the  necessaries  of  civilised  life,  she 
instinctively  seeks  those  forms  of  it  that  convey 
something  else  as  well  as  pleasure.  She  pre- 
fers an  oratorio  to  an  opera,  an  archaic  or 
highly  mannerised  picture  which  gives  her  an 
opportunity  for  study  to  one  of  direct  sensuous 
appeal.  Confronted  with  an  undoubted  work 
of  art,  her  fluttered  consciousness  will  dart  hither 
and  thither  to  find  relief  from  its  pure  beauty 


272  THE  LADY 

in  some  of  the  outlets  always  afforded  by  a  true 
work  of  art;  she  will  not  rest  until  she  has 
found  something  to  inform  her  mind  or  to 
fortify  her  character.  This  temperament  is 
naturally  most  apt  to  fall  into  confusion  when 
the  art  is  so  ambiguous  as  those  that  deal  with 
the  medium  of  words.  In  the  matter  of  books 
she  has  learned,  under  the  influence  of  a 
Gallicising  generation,  to  speak  as  though  she 
accepted  literature  as  an  art.  In  the  matter  of 
the  drama  which  is  largely  under  her  patronage, 
the  state  of  the  stage  to-day  is  sufficient  evi- 
dence of  the  ease  with  which  her  attention  can 
be  distracted  from  the  one  vital  question  of  the 
merit  of  a  play  as  a  play.  And  in  the  matter 
of  conversation,  for  the  brief  period  during 
which  she  gave  it  her  attention,  she  regarded 
it  primarily  or  altogether  as  a  means  of  edifi- 
cation. To  Hannah  More  its  function  was  to 
mend  the  taste  and  form  the  mind;  to  cement 
friendship  and  to  propagate  Christian  knowl- 
edge. Mrs.  Chapone  naturally  took  an  even 
more  sublime  view  of  its  ethical  value;  at  its 
best,  conversation  should  have  as  its  end  the 
spiritual  communion  of  the  participants,  it 
should  unite  them  in  a  saintly  rivalry;  but  even 
dull  conversation  has  its  disciplinary  value; 
through  its  agency  patience  and  self-denial  can 
be  brought  to  great  perfection.  It  is  refreshing 


LADY  OF  THE  BLUE  STOCKINGS  273 

to  turn  from  this  innocent  Philistinism  to  Dr. 
Johnson's  purely  cynical  view  of  conversation 
as  a  game.  Mrs.  Chapone  laid  down  in  her 
Essay  on  Conversation  that  scandalous  or  un- 
charitable talk  is  a  more  dangerous  pastime  even 
than  cards.  At  Mrs.  Garrick's  dinner-table, 
she  exalted  her  theory  at  the  expense  of  her  prac- 
tice by  remarking  of  Mr.  Thomas  Hollis  that 
"he  was  a  bad  man;  he  used  to  talk  uncharit- 
ably." "Poh!  poh!  madam;"  said  the  great 
moralist,  "who  is  the  worse  for  being  talked 
of  uncharitably?"  The  doctor  himself  never 
played  at  cards,  and  had  perhaps  diverted  as 
many  from  them  as  any  man  in  England,  not 
by  denouncing  them,  but  by  practising  conver- 
sation as  a  fine  art.  When  he  would  begin 
thus:  "Why,  Sir,  as  to  the  good  or  evil  of  card- 
playing — "  "Now,"  said  Garrick,  "he  is  think- 
ing which  side  he  shall  take."  And  we  can 
fancy  that  many  a  man  sat  listening  with  de- 
light to  Dr.  Johnson's  defence  of  gaming  who 
would  otherwise  have  been  at  the  tables. 

The  Blue-Stocking  was  distinguished  by  the 
propriety  of  her  behaviour  and  the  correctness 
of  her  sentiments.  ,  While  fashionable  society 
used  the  free-and-easy  manners  and  notions  of 
the  French,  middle-class  ideals  in  England  were 
prim.  It  was  a  reasonable  age,  abhorring  en- 
thusiasm. To  keep  cool,  to  retain  one's  self- 


274  THE  LADY 

possession,  was  the  aim  of  the  self-respecting 
lady.  "Love,"  is  a  word  that  was  not  in  fre- 
quent use  in  the  eighteenth  century.  A  lady 
felt  at  the  utmost  a  "preference"  for  the  man 
she  chose  to  marry,  and  she  was  satisfied  if  she 
felt  that  he  "valued"  her.  Mrs.  Harlowe  was 
shocked  that  her  daughter  ventured  to  prefer 
the  handsome  Lovelace  to  the  repulsive  Soames, 
— to  consider  (as  she  phrased  it)  "the  person" 
The  Blue-Stockings  as  a  rule  kept  themselves 
admirably  clear  of  such  preferences.  Mrs. 
Montagu  at  the  age  of  twenty-two  was  the  wife 
of  a  man  of  fifty-one.  Mrs.  Delany,  the 
priestess  of  Propriety,  married  to  oblige  her  fam- 
ily, when  she  was  seventeen  and  he  fifty-nine, 
a  man  whom  she  describes  later  as  "altogether 
a  person  more  disgusting  than  engaging." 
When  she  became  a  widow  she  made  a  second 
match  with  a  man  sixteen  years  her  senior.  It 
was  hardly  ladylike  to  marry  for  love.  Hester 
Mulso  did  so,  at  the  age  of  thirty-five,  and  her 
acquaintance  took  some  pleasure  in  believing 
that  the  venture  was  unsuccessful.  It  is  cer- 
tain that  her  husband,  Mr.  Chapone,  died  after 
ten  months  of  it;  gossip  added  that  he  would 
not  have  his  wife  in  the  room  while  he  lay 
dying.  At  any  rate,  Mrs.  Chapone  became  an 
advocate  of  marriage  by  arrangement,  whereas 
Hester  Mulso  had  been  all  for  the  marriage  of 


LADY  OF  THE  BLUE  STOCKINGS  275 

preference.  She  was  never  weary  of  debating 
with  Richardson  the  case  of  Clarissa  Harlowe 
in  its  bearing  on  the  two  interesting  questions 
of  filial  obedience  and  the  motive  of  marriage. 
While  she  never  was  so  heretical  as  to  imagine 
that  a  daughter  could  be  at  liberty  to  marry 
against  the  will  of  her  parents,  she  yet  insisted 
on  that  "freedom  of  rejection"  which  was  all 
that  poor  Clarissa  asked.  But  she  was  far 
from  positing  a  social  or  mental  equality  of  the 
sexes.  In  her  Matrimonial  Creed,  she  says  "I 
believe  that  a  husband  has  a  divine  right  to  the 
absolute  obedience  of  his  wife  in  all  cases  where 
the  first  duties  do  not  interfere;  and  that  as  her 
appointed  ruler  and  head,  he  is  undoubtedly 
her  superior."  She  adds  naively  that  it  be- 
hooves a  woman  to  select  her  husband  carefully 
in  order  to  make  sure  that  he  is  her  superior 
de  facto  as  well  de  jure.  But  of  the  general 
superiority  of  men  to  women  she  has  no  doubt. 
"You  may  find  advantages,"  she  says  in  the 
Letter  to  a  New  Married  Lady,  "in  the  con- 
versation of  many  ladies,  if  not  equal  to  those 
that  men  are  qualified  to  give,  yet  equal  at  least 
to  what  you  as  a  female  are  capable  of  receiv- 
ing." 

Mrs.  Carter  and  Mrs.  Hannah  More  never 
married  at  all,  their  titles  being  brevets,  after  the 
manner  of  the  age.  And  married  or  unmar- 


276  THE  LADY 

ried,  these  ladies  kept  clear  o'f  irregular  re- 
lations. The  philandering  of  Lord  Lyttleton 
and  Lord  Bath  with  Mrs.  Montagu  could 
hardly  with  the  best  will  in  the  world  be  made 
to  yield  food  for  gossip.  Dr.  Johnson's  pon- 
derous gallantry  and  Richardson's  soulful  in- 
timacies and  Horace  Walpole's  sincere  liking 
for  Hannah  More  were  all  that  the  Blue-Stock- 
ings had  to  offset  the  famous  liaisons  of  the  salon- 
ieres.  This  coolness  of  temperament  needs  to 
be  understood  before  posterity  can  account  for 
the  grief  and  horror  that  Mrs.  Thrale's  second 
marriage  caused  among  her  friends. 

Mrs.  Thrale  is  to  the  modern  mind  by  far 
the  most  sympathetic  of  the  Blue-Stockings. 
She  had  no  pose;  she  was  witty  because  she 
could  not  help  it,  a  reader  because  she  was  fond 
of  books,  a  hostess  because  she  liked  society, 
sweet-tempered  because  that  was  her  nature. 
She  was  a  Welshwoman  and  therefore  free  from 
the  self-consciousness  that  blights  middle-class 
society  in  England.  Her  first  marriage  was  as 
purely  a  matter  of  business  as  the  most  deli- 
cate-minded could  wish.  Mr.  Thrale  admired 
her  but  without  vulgar  enthusiasm.  As  she 
herself  said  of  him,  "with  regard  to  his  wife, 
though  little  tender  of  her  person,  he  is  very 
partial  to  her  understanding."  Mrs.  Thrale's 
understanding  was  of  a  flexible,  serviceable, 


Mrs.   Hannah   More. 

From  an   engraving   by   T.   Godley,   after   the   portrait  by   E.    Bird. 

See  p.  280 


LADY  OF  THE  BLUE  STOCKINGS   277 

vital  sort,  ready  to  play  and  ready  to  work. 
Thrale  was  a  prosperous  brewer,  but  was  beset 
by  a  tendency  to  "overbrew,"  which  nearly 
ruined  him.  This  tendency  it  was  Mrs. 
Thrale's  steady  endeavour  to  check.  On  one 
occasion  Thrale  was  drawn  into  a  scheme  to 
make  beer  "without  the  beggarly  elements  of 
malt  and  hops."  In  the  calamity  that  resulted 
from  the  venture,  Mrs.  Thrale  exerted  an  ad- 
mirable practical  faculty,  borrowed  money  to 
tide  over  the  hard  times  and  persuaded  the  em- 
ployees to  go  on  with  their  work. 

When  Mr.  Thrale  died,  his  widow  wound 
up  his  affairs  with  diligence  and  success  and 
sold  the  brewery  with  a  deep  sigh  of  relief. 
"I  have  by  this  bargain,"  she  wrote,  "purchased 
peace  and  a  stable  fortune,  restoration  to  my  orig- 
inal rank  in  life,  and  a  situation  undisturbed 
by  commercial  jargon,  unpolluted  by  commer- 
cial frauds,  undisgraced  by  commercial  con- 
nections." And  then  she  contracted  a  second 
marriage,  a  marriage  of  inclination  with  Signer 
Piozzi,  a  man  of  character  and  position,  whom 
she  had  known  for  years,  a  successful  profes- 
sional singer  earning  about  £1200  a  year. 
"The  man  I  love,"  she  said,  "I  love  for  his 
honesty,  for  his  tenderness  of  heart,  his  dignity 
of  mind,  his  piety  to  God,  his  duty  to  his  mother, 
and  his  delicacy  to  me."  It  is  a  pity  that  Mrs. 


278  THE  LADY 

Thrale  could  not  know  how  entirely  the  nine- 
teenth and  twentieth  centuries  would  approve  her 
second  match;  her  own  century  was  horrified 
by  it.  Piozzi  was  a  "foreigner,"  which  at  that 
time  raised  a  strong  presumption  against  him. 
He  was  an  artist,  and  England  had  not  yet  been 
laughed  into  hiding  her  conviction  that  to  turn 
from  a  brewer  to  an  artist  is  to  come  down  in 
the  world.  But  the  really  shocking  thing  about 
Mrs.  Thrale's  choice  of  him  was  its  frank  basis 
in  love.  She  used  the  very  word  with  an  in- 
decent freedom,  assuming  that  it  denoted  a 
very  important  element  in  life.  Dr.  Johnson's 
reprobation  had  of  course  a  largely  personal 
ground,  but  even  Horace  Walpole  nicknamed 
her  "Mrs.  Frail-Piozzi,"  and  Madame  d'Arb- 
lay  brought  out  her  worst  language  to  express 
her  disillusion.  "Her  station  in  society,"  she 
says,  "her  fortune,  her  distinguished  education, 
and  her  conscious  sense  of  its  distinction;  and 
yet  more  her  high  origin — a  native  honour, 
which  had  always  seemed  the  glory  of  her  self- 
appreciation;  all  had  contributed  to  lift  her  so 
eminently  above  the  restlessly  impetuous  tribe 
who  immolate  fame,  interest  and  duty  to  the 
shrine  of  passion,  that  the  outcry  of  surprise 
and  censure  raised  throughout  the  metropolis  by 
these  unexpected  nuptials,  was  almost  stunning 
in  its  jarring  noise  of  general  reprobation;  re- 


LADY  OF  THE  BLUE  STOCKINGS  279 

sounding  through  madrigals,  parodies,  dec- 
lamations, epigrams  and  irony."  The  mar- 
riage turned  out  disappointingly  well.  Piozzi 
was  an  agreeable,  quiet,  accomplished  man,  and 
took  excellent  care  of  his  wife's  property.  So- 
ciety gathered  about  her  again,  and  she  lived 
through  a  vivacious  old  age  into  a  more  con- 
genial century.  Perhaps  nothing  could  bring 
home  to  us  so  sharply  the  changed  attitude  of 
society  towards  "love"  than  to  note  that  this 
friend  of  Mrs.  Chapone  lived  to  talk  with  Tom 
Moore. 

The  Blue-Stocking  lady  was  strongly  conserv- 
ative. She  had  all  the  timidities  of  her  age,  her 
country,  her  class  and  her  sex.  She  had  none 
of  the  indifference  to  public  opinion  of  the  great 
lady  as  represented  by  Lady  Mary  Wortley 
Montagu.  She  had  none  of  the  uncompro- 
mising zeal  of  the  feminist  reformer  as  repre- 
sented by  Mary  Astell  early  in  the  century  and 
by  Mary  Wollstonecraft  at  its  close.  She  had 
not  the  free  speculative  mind  of  the  brilliant 
lady  of  France.  Her  modest  aim  in  life  was 
eminently  English — to  gain  a  little  personal 
freedom  for  herself  and  do  a  little  good  accord- 
ing to  her  lights  to  the  persons  in  her  immedi- 
ate environment.  She  believed  that  a  consti- 
tutional monarchy,  the  Church  of  England,  and 
the  superiority  of  man  to  woman  enjoyed  the 


280  THE  LADY 

same  sanction,  and  that  the  highest.  None  of 
her  activities  contained  a  menace  to  any  of 
these  institutions.  With  an  instinctive  sense  for 
what  her  environment  would  stand,  she  per- 
ceived that  an  individual  here  and  there  might 
study  Greek  or  anything  else,  so  long  as  she  did 
not  propose,  as  Mary  Astell  proposed,  to  found 
a  college  for  girls  on  the  assumption  that  they 
were  as  well  worth  teaching  as  boys.  Her  own 
personal  adventure  was  enough  for  her.  She 
had  no  wish  to  raise  all  the  questions  at  once, 
as  it  seemed  so  natural  to  do  in  France,  and  as 
poor  Mary  Wollstonecraft  insisted  on  doing  in 
her  deplorably  un-English  way.  Yet  she  was 
a  pioneer.  She  extended  to  women  the  precious 
right  of  every  Englishman  to  do  as  he  likes. 
She  had  the  oddest  resemblance  to  very  different 
persons,  who  were  to  come  later.  It  is  divert- 
ing to  see  Miss  Martineau  fore-shadowed  in 
Hannah  More.  What  Comte  was  to  Miss 
Martineau,  the  rector  was  to  Mrs.  More.  Both 
women  were  excellent,  impersonal,  single- 
minded.  The  Cheap  Repository  Tracts  that 
were  to  stem  the  French  Revolution  enjoyed  the 
immense  success  that  was  to  attend  the  publica- 
tions of  the  Society  for  the  Diffusion  of  Useful 
Knowledge.  The  lot  of  the  negro  stirred  one 
as  deeply  as  the  other;  to  one  as  to  the  other 
decorum  was  the  law  of  life.  The  difference 


LADY  OF  THE  BLUE  STOCKINGS  281 

between  positivism  and  orthodoxy  sinks  into 
the  background  as  we  contemplate  their  com- 
mon devotion  to  Propriety.  Apart  from  so 
individual  a  case  as  Miss  Martineau,  the  general 
class  of  sturdy  British  spinster  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  independent,  often  self-supporting,  un- 
abashed by  her  celibacy,  turning  her  leisure  to 
good  account  for  others,  rejoicing  in  the  vicis- 
situdes of  the  committee- room,  constituting  the 
spinal  column  of  innumerable  "boards,"  derives 
from  Mrs.  Carter  and  Mrs.  More.  The  super- 
ficial view  therefore  that  beholds  the  Blue- 
Stocking  lady  as  merely  an  inferior  variety  of 
the  saloniere  fails  to  take  account  of  her  es- 
sential character.  The  saloniere  was  the  climax 
of  the  lady  as  she  had  been  understood  for  two 
thousand  years;  she  was  as  far  removed  from 
ordinary  womanhood  as  physical  limitations 
permitted.  The  Blue-Stocking  on  the  other 
hand  began  to  bridge  the  gulf  between  the  lady 
and  the  rest  of  her  sex,  to  humanise  her  and  to 
release  her  from  mental  parasitism.  Her 
movement,  blind,  tentative  and  ineffectual  as  it 
was,  became  visible  in  the  next  century  as  a  first 
effort  in  the  struggle  to  get  along  without  men. 


THE  LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES 

"'I  have  no  prospect,'" 
UNCLE  ISRAEL  in  Mrs.  Butler's  Georgian  Plantation. 

TESS  of  the  D'Ubervilles  on  her  disas- 
trous wedding  night  was  carried  in  the 
arms  of  her  somnambulist  husband 
across  the  single  rail  that  bridged  a  swollen 
stream.  This  singular  episode  may  fairly  be 
taken  as  a  symbol  of  proprietary  marriage; 
there  are  moments  when  every  married  woman 
finds  that  she  is  borne  in  the  arms  of  a  sleep- 
walker. She  dares  not  wake  him  as  he  foots 
his  dangerous  way,  for  it  might  mean  destruc- 
tion to  both.  If  the  lady's  life  everywhere  is 
punctuated  by  crises  in  which  she  must  shut  her 
eyes  and  take  her  chance,  an  even  more  violent 
figure  must  be  used  to  typify  her  existence  at 
a  special  time  and  place  when  her  suspense  and 
danger  were  not  momentary  but  chronic.  Ac- 
cording to  the  social  theory  of  the  old  South, 
the  lady's  equilibrium  was  that  of  a  Gothic  saint 
in  her  niche ;  she  stood  at  a  giddy  height  but  the 
fabric  beneath  her  was  solidly  buttressed;  noth- 
ing short  of  an  earthquake  could  displace  her. 

282 


LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES      283 

In  reality,  however,  she  was  neither  more  nor 
less  secure  than  the  lady-acrobat.  Flat  on  his 
back  on  the  ground  lay  Quashy  with  lifted  legs, 
and  on  his  upturned  soles  stood  with  folded 
arms  the  planter.  And  on  the  planter's  head 
stood  the  lady,  gracefully  poised  on  one  toe. 
The  spectator's  heart  is  in  his  mouth  as  he  sees 
her  with  infinite  precautions  bend  her  body  for- 
ward, stretch  out  the  balancing  leg  behind  and 
extend  her  arms.  She  seems  to  be  flying  like 
the  Victory  of  Paeonius  at  Olympia.  She  is 
an  angel.  But  though  she  is  smiling  her  eye 
is  fixed  and  her  attention  strained.  Quashy  has 
but  to  turn  over,  well  she  knows,  and  her  brave 
defiance  of  gravitation  will  come  to  grief. 

The  archaic  character  of  southern  ante- 
bellum society  is  illustrated  by  the  rapidity  with 
which  since  its  collapse  it  has  fled  back  in  his- 
torical perspective  to  join  the  forms  with  which 
it  should  properly  have  been  contemporary. 
It  disappeared  not  as  things  so  widespread 
generally  disappear  in  real  life,  a  little  at  a 
time  and  so  gradually  that  the  participants 
hardly  notice  the  change.  On  the  contrary  it 
disappeared  as  things  do  in  dreams;  it  was  held 
together  like  M.  Waldemar  by  mesmeric  passes 
and  when  they  were  interrupted  it  was  found 
to  have  been  dead  some  time.  It  became  im- 
mediately the  theme  of  legend  as  though  it  had 


284  THE  LADY 

thriven  in  the  ninth  century  instead  of  in  the 
nineteenth.  Like  most  other  archaic  social 
forms  it  has  left  but  an  unsatisfying  document- 
ary basis  for  history.  For  the  hundredth  time 
fiction  is  proved  to  be  incomparably  more  en- 
during than  life,  and  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  bids 
fair  to  be  the  form  in  which  posterity  will  see 
the  age  of  which  it  is  so  bewildering  a  mixture 
of  Dichtung  und  Wahrheit.  The  Homeric 
poems  and  the  romances  of  chivalry,  the  Hebrew 
scriptures  and  Uncle  Tom  have  established 
ideas  against  which  the  scientific  historian,  if 
we  may  assume  his  existence,  can  but  file  his 
exceptions;  the  jury  will  not  heed  his  techni- 
calities. The  South  cried  out  against  Uncle 
Tom  but  was  unable  to  oppose  it  by  a  similarly 
persuasive  work  of  fiction,  and  fiction  appears 
to  be  the  only  form  of  statement  that  in  the  long 
run  carries  conviction.  As  far  as  the  voice  of 
the  South  itself  has  been  effective  in  helping  to 
shape  the  myth,  it  has  spoken  chiefly  through 
the  lips  of  amiable  and  estimable  old  ladies  re- 
calling honestly  but  uncritically  the  days  of 
their  youth.  This  is  a  class  of  literature  in 
which  notoriously  dimensions  expand  and 
colours  grow  bright.  After  a  course  of  it  the 
reader  who  visits  the  physical  remains  of  its 
world  is  amazed  by  their  shrinkage.  At  Monti- 
cello  and  Mount  Vernon  the  traveller  feels,  it 


•  —  a 
C  S 
2  E 


LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES    285 

is  true,  a  touching  and  imperishable  charm,  but 
it  is  the  charm  of  modesty,  not  the  charm  of 
grandeur.  And  apart  from  the  historic  seats 
of  the  mighty  he  searches  in  vain  for  the  stately 
mansions  of  his  fancy.  Surely  they  were  not  all 
burned  by  Yankee  raiders  or  riotous  freedmen. 
"Stately  mansions"  is  in  fact  very  strong  lan- 
guage. The  traveller  would  not  immediately 
recognise  as  deserving  it  the  large  two-storied 
house  of  wood  or  brick  with  its  double  gallery 
that  formed  the  well-to-do-planter's  residence. 

The  archaic  lady  of  the  South  obeyed  a  law 
of  her  being  in  leaving  very  little  written  record 
of  herself.  Ladies  from  the  real  world  pene- 
trated into  her  territory  from  time  to  time  and 
gave  accounts  of  what  they  saw.  Two  English- 
women could  hardly  be  more  unlike  in  temper- 
ament and  antecedents  than  Miss  Martineau  and 
Fanny  Kemble,  but  they  differed  far  more  from 
the  Southern  lady  than  from  each  other.  They 
agreed  in  approaching  the  South  with  a  lively 
interest  and  each  was  stirred  to  write  excellently 
in  her  own  way  of  what  she  found.  In  the 
North  a  rather  remarkable  group  of  women 
arose  in  the  second  quarter  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  able  to  think  and  to  speak,  who  asso- 
ciated, with  a  profounder  logic  than  they  were 
perhaps  themselves  aware  of,  the  political  and 
social  limitations  of  women  with  those  of  the 


286  THE  LADY 

slave.  A  really  noble  eloquence  sprang  from 
the  enthusiasm  of  Lucretia  Mott.  The  lady  of 
the  South  was  equally  enthusiastic.  The  time 
came  when  she  sincerely  believed  that  the  chief 
end  of  slavery  was  the  good  of  the  slave.  But 
she  was  unable  to  say  so.  She  could  suffer  for 
her  faith,  see  her  sons  die  for  it,  cherish  it  long 
after  the  men  who  fought  for  it  had  laid  it 
aside,  but  it  never  stirred  her  to  effective  de- 
fence of  it.  This  is  not  attributable  to  any  in- 
herent defect  in  it;  causes  just  as  bad  have  been 
movingly  and  triumphantly  argued.  It  is  not 
attributable  to  any  lack  on  the  part  of  the 
Southern  lady  of  the  talents  that  we  call  literary, 
for  soon  after  the  war  she  gained  a  creditable 
place  among  American  men  and  women  of  let- 
ters. The  trouble  was  that  the  social  system 
based  on  slavery  discouraged  general  mental  ef- 
fort both  in  men  and  women,  but  especially  in 
women.  Professor  Shaler  has  worked  out  very 
convincingly  the  effect  on  Southern  manners, 
culture  and  history  of  the  survival  in  the  South  of 
feudal  habits  of  mind,  and  Professor  Trent  has 
added,  in  his  life  of  Sims,  the  direct  result  of 
these  habits  in  the  discouragement  of  self-expres- 
sion. "Southerners  lived  a  life  which,  though 
simple  and  picturesque,  was  nevertheless  calcu- 
lated to  repress  many  of  the  best  faculties  and 
powers  of  our  nature.  It  was  a  life  affording 


LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES     287 

few  opportunities  to  talents  that  did  not  lie  in 
certain  beaten  grooves.  It  was  a  life  gaining  its 
intellectual  nourishment,  just  as  it  did  its  mate- 
rial comforts,  largely  from  abroad, — a  life  that 
choked  all  thought  and  investigation  that  did 
not  tend  to  conserve  existing  institutions  and 
opinions,  a  life  that  rendered  originality 
scarcely  possible  except  under  the  guise  of  ec- 
centricity." In  other  words  the  planter's  high 
gifts  of  intelligence  were  concentrated  on  keep- 
ing his  balance,  and  the  lady  in  an  even  higher 
degree  must  make  no  gesture  outside  her  pre- 
scribed role.  Though  the  exigencies  of  the  situ- 
ation often  made  him  a  shrewd  debater  and  a 
vigorous  orator,  they  had  no  analogous  effect 
upon  his  wife. 

The  truth  is  that  in  the  days  of  slavery  no- 
body was  free  at  the  South.  The  planter  whose 
autocracy  was  his  boast,  who  contrasted  himself 
with  the  men  of  other  communities  as  being 
more  completely  a  free  agent  than  they,  sub- 
mitted to  enact  laws  for  himself  that  no  other 
Anglo-Saxon  society  in  the  world  at  that  time 
would  have  endured.  It  may  not  be  surprising 
that  Louisiana  with  its  exotic  social  ideas  should 
make  "imprisonment  at  hard  labour  not  less  than 
three  years  nor  more  than  twenty-one  years,  or 
death,  at  the  discretion  of  the  court,"  the  pun- 
ishment for  one  who  "shall  make  use  of  language 


288  THE  LADY 

in  any  public  discourse  .  .  .  or  in  private 
discourses  ...  or  shall  make  use  of  signs 
or  actions  having  a  tendency  to  produce  discon- 
tent among  the  free  coloured  population  of  this 
state,  or  to  excite  insubordination  among  the 
slaves."  But  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  the  Code 
of  Virginia  of  1849  abridged  the  freedom  of 
speech  and  press.  As  the  slave  was  a  chattel  of 
the  owner  who  could  do  what  he  liked  with  him 
except  kill  him  (otherwise  than  "by  accident  in 
giving  such  slave  moderate  correction")  it 
would  seem  evident  that  he  could  if  he  liked 
set  him  free.  In  Virginia  he  could  generally 
do  so,  by  his  last  will  or  by  deed,  provided  his 
creditors  were  not  prejudiced;  though  the  Re- 
vised Code  attached  to  the  permission  to  eman- 
cipate a  rider  that  contained  the  oddest  rap- 
prochement of  barbarism  and  civilisation:  "If 
any  emancipated  slave  (infants  excepted)  shall 
remain  within  the  state  more  than  twelve 
months  after  his  or  her  right  to  freedom  shall 
have  accrued,  he  or  she  shall  forfeit  all  such 
right,  and  may  be  apprehended  and  sold  by  the 
overseers  of  the  poor,  etc.,  for  the  benefit  of  the 
Literary  Fund."  But  in  several  states  an  act 
of  legislature  was  required  to  allow  a  man  to 
relinquish  his  property.  In  Georgia  the  pen- 
alty for  attempting  to  free  a  slave  in  any  other 
way  was  not  to  exceed  one  thousand  dollars. 


LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES     289 

In  the  use  of  his  chattel  the  owner  was  hamp- 
ered in  many  ways  by  laws  forbidding  him  to 
teach  the  slave  to  read  or  write.  In  Georgia 
anyone  was  liable  to  fine  and  imprisonment 
"who  shall  procure,  suffer  or  permit  a  slave, 
negro  or  person  of  colour  to  transact  business  for 
him  in  writing." 

All  these  abridgments  of  liberty  which 
would  at  that  period  have  been  intolerable  to 
most  English-speaking  people  were  but  the  re- 
flection of  a  far  more  coercive  social  sentiment. 
The  lawlessness  of  the  planter  in  certain  direc- 
tions may  be  recognised  as  reaction  against  the 
restrictions  on  which  his  existence  as  a  class  de- 
pended. No  man  was  ever  more  enslaved  by 
public  opinion.  As  the  last  traces  of  serfdom 
and  slavery  vanished  in  other  societies,  the  plant- 
ers came  gradually  to  realise  that  they  were  alone 
in  the  world.  They  were  mutineers  against  the 
course  of  civilisation,  and  the  only  safety  of 
mutineers  is  to  hang  together  lest  they  hang 
separately.  Thus  a  rigorous  and  impera- 
tive social  mandate  was  formulated  more 
tyrannous  than  the  statute-book,  and  another 
mediaeval  characteristic  was  revivified.  Noth- 
ing so  "solid"  had  existed  since  the  effect- 
ive days  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire.  Once 
more  the  world  saw  a  society  so  homogeneous 
that  if  one  turned  over  all  must.  Every  planter 


290  THE  LADY 

must  continue  steadfastly  to  hold  his  wolf  by 
the  ears,  or  all  must  let  go  together.  The  homo- 
geneity of  the  middle  age  in  thought,  in  art  and 
in  Weltanschauung  was  in  the  last  analysis  the 
result  of  fear,  the  fear  of  eternal  damnation 
systematised  and  exploited  by  the  church  and 
the  fear  of  violence  from  every  secular  power 
strong  enough  to  offer  it.  Perhaps  no  social 
motive  but  fear  has  ever  had  so  strong  a  co- 
hesive power.  The  solidity  of  the  South  be- 
fore the  war  was  a  striking  example  of  its 
strength.  The  South  was  afraid  of  a  number  of 
things; — of  Nat  Turner  and  his  kind,  of  the 
repressive  force  of  Northern  opinion,  but  most 
of  all  of  the  disintegrating  effect  on  its  own 
members  of  free  discussion,  of  a  liberal  habit  of 
mind,  of  participation  in  the  current  of  thought 
of  the  world  at  large.  The  planter  was  forced 
to  build  his  moral  house  for  defence,  as  the  baron 
of  the  twelfth  century  was  forced  to  build  his 
physical  house.  Light  and  air  were  necessarily 
sacrificed  to  the  requirements  of  fortification. 
The  history  of  the  middle  age  is  largely  a  his- 
tory of  the  growth  of  walls  induced  by  the  im- 
provements in  the  machinery  of  assault.  So  is 
the  history  of  the  slaveholding  South.  As  the 
castellan  developed  his  means  of  defence  from 
the  simple  wall  and  tower  to  the  mathematical 
complexity  of  the  twelfth  century  fortress,  so  the 


LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES     291 

planter  developed  his  moral  position  as  the  at- 
tack became  more  systematic ;  and  every  addition 
to  his  defences  meant  increased  isolation.  The 
South  was  always  addicted  to  religion :  when  the 
sects  that  chiefly  ministered  to  it  broke  from  their 
brethren  in  the  North  and  preached  slavery  as 
the  will  of  God,  we  may  say  that  the  portcullis 
fell.  When  under  the  planter's  orders  the 
Southern  postmaster  refused  to  transmit  through 
the  United  States  mails  so  mild  an  anti-slavery 
influence  as  the  New  York  Tribune,  we  see  the 
raising  of  the  pont-levis.  Fear  begets  courage 
in  well-bred  men  and  women,  but  it  is  a  courage 
of  a  somewhat  self-conscious  order  and  has  in- 
evitably the  narrow  aim  of  self-preservation. 
Neither  the  baron  nor  the  planter  had  much 
time  to  give  to  mental  and  spiritual  culture. 
The  brightest  powers  of  the  one  were  devoted 
to  the  art  of  war,  of  the  other  to  the  art  of  de- 
bate. If  slavery  was  to  persist  its  champions 
must  uphold  it  incessantly  in  the  Senate  and  on 
the  election-platform.  The  whole  brains  of  the 
South  were  applied  for  fifty  years  to  the  mediae- 
val task  of  erecting  a  logic  and  an  ethic  for  slav- 
ery. This  was  as  stimulating  and  exciting  to 
the  planter  as  was  the  theory  and  practice  of 
resisting  siege  to  the  castellan,  but  what  sort  of 
life  did  it  offer  to  the  lady? 

It    is    generally    remarked    that    a   woman, 


292  THE  LADY 

whether  by  some  real  psychological  idiosyncrasy 
or  as  a  result  of  her  ordinary  conditions  of  life, 
is  apt  to  be  more  struck  with  details  than  by 
generalisations.  This  sometimes  works  to  her 
own  disadvantage  and  that  of  the  community,  as 
for  instance  when  it  makes  her  the  supporter  of 
the  "bargain-counter."  Her  abstract  knowl- 
edge of  the  principles  of  this  phenomenon  is  not 
sufficiently  vivid  to  enable  her  to  withstand  the 
appeal  of  a  concrete  instance.  On  the  other 
hand  this  feminine  trait  is  of  inestimable  serv- 
ice as  society  is  now  constituted  in  keeping  its 
owner  incorrigibly  individualistic,  easily  in- 
terested in  the  special  case,  ready  to  ignore  the 
law  when  it  is  inept  and  thus  to  constitute  her- 
self a  perpetual  court  of  equity.  Bearing  in 
mind  this  function  characteristic  of  all  women 
and  more  especially  of  the  lady,  the  student  of 
slavery  is  baffled  by  the  difficulty  of  understand- 
ing how  the  planter's  theories  were  able  to  con- 
vince his  wife  in  the  presence  of  their  practical 

results.     Fanny  Kemble  writes:  "Mr. was 

called  out  this  evening  to  listen  to  a  complaint 
of  overwork  from  a  gang  of  pregnant  women. 
I  did  not  stay  to  listen  to  the  details  of  their 
petition,  for  I  am  unable  to  command  myself 
on  such  occasions,  and  Mr. seemed  posi- 
tively degraded  in  my  eyes  as  he  stood  enforcing 
upon  these  women  the  necessity  of  fulfilling  their 


LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES     293 

appointed  tasks.  How  honourable  he  would 
have  appeared  to  me  begrimed  with  the  sweat 
and  toil  of  the  coarsest  manual  labour,  to  what  he 
then  seemed,  setting  forth  to  these  wretched, 
ignorant  women,  as  a  duty,  their  unpaid,  exact- 
ing labour  1  I  turned  away  in  bitter  disgust." 
How  did  it  happen  that  any  gentlewoman  was 
able  to  command  herself  on  such  occasions? 
We  are  accustomed  to  think  that  our  own  social 
sins  endure  chiefly  because  the  lady  sees  so  lit- 
tle of  them.  In  every  case  others  do  the  dirty 
work  for  her.  If  she  had  to  shoot  and  skin  her 
own  bird  the  plumage  would  disappear  from 
her  hat.  A  military  journal  has  lately  cried 
out  against  the  proposition  to  send  out  a  woman 
as  war-correspondent.  If  the  world  begins 
to  learn  through  women  what  goes  on  at  the 
front  (cries  this  voice  in  the  wilderness)  we 
may  as  well  say  good-bye  to  war!  Similarly 
if  the  sweatshop,  the  tenement  house  and  the 
"Raines-law  hotel"  were  picturesquely  grouped 
under  the  elms  of  her  country-place,  if  her  chil- 
dren spent  their  infancy  in  close  playfellowship 
with  the  offspring  of  those  institutions,  if  her 
husband  were  occasionally  called  out  from  his 
dinner  to  listen  to  a  complaint  of  overwork 
from  a  gang  of  pregnant  women,  we  like  to 
imagine  that  the  result  would  be  a  clean  sweep 
of  this  class  of  our  iniquities. 


294  THE  LADY 

One  answer  to  the  puzzle  in  regard  to  the 
planter's  wife  is  fairly  obvious.  The  most  vo- 
cal part  of  the  South  was  Virginia.  Nine 
persons  out  of  ten  in  the  North  to-day  use 
"Virginia"  and  "the  South"  as  interchangeable 
terms.  That  state  formed  early  the  habit  of 
producing  distinguished  men ;  the  prestige  of  her 
revolutionary  history  gave  her  great  weight 
both  North  and  South.  The  South  (with  the 
exception  perhaps  of  South  Carolina)  was 
willing  to  make  Virginia  the  spokesman  and 
the  North  was  willing  to  accept  her  as  repre- 
sentative. But  Virginia  was  not  representa- 
tive. When  an  old  Virginian  recalls  with 
rapture  those  rosy  ante-bellum  days  which  have 
become  something  of  a  jest  to  a  world  that 
knew  them  not,  he  is  not  touching  up  the  picture 
very  much  as  regards  the  relation  between 
master  and  servant.  It  is  probably  true  that  at 
any  rate  after  the  soil  was  eaten  up  the  worst 
features  of  slavery  were  not  visible  in  Virginia. 
A  lady  might  live  and  die  there  without  once  see- 
ing a  negro  under  the  lash,  or  even  witnessing 
unless  in  exceptional  circumstances  those  forci- 
ble partings  of  families  which  the  abolitionist 
rightly  put  his  finger  on  as  the  greatest  of  social 
mistakes.  She  was  surrounded  by  a  community 
of  sleek,  wellfed,  cheerful,  comic  creatures, 
as  unlike  Fanny  Kemble's  retinue  as  two  groups 


LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES     295 

of  the  same  race  could  be.  In  her  neighbour- 
hood harsh  treatment  of  servants  was  bad  form 
and  was  punished  by  social  ostracism.  And 
if  the  Virginian  emigrated  to  another  state  he 
took  his  traditions  with  him.  If  his  neigh- 
bours in  the  new  environment  had  a  lower 
standard  they  concealed  it  from  him  as  long  as 
possible.  "I  cannot,"  said  Thomas  Dabney, 
expressing  a  profound  truth  in  social  psychol- 
ogy, "I  cannot  punish  people  with  whom  I  asso- 
ciate every  day."  The  average  Virginia 
gentleman  could  no  more  have  a  slave  flogged 
than  the  average  gentleman  anywhere  could  de- 
liberately infect  a  fellow-creature  with  tuber- 
culosis. We  are  so  made  that  our  victims  must 
be  out  of  our  sight.  But  he  could  and  did 
breed  and  rear  strong,  healthy  men  and  women 
whom  it  would  do  you  good  to  see,  and  sell 
them  in  large  annual  invoices  for  service  in  the 
sugar  and  cotton  states.  A  Virginia  gentleman 
told  Olmsted  that  "his  women  were  uncom- 
monly good  breeders;  he  did  not  suppose  there 
was  a  lot  of  women  anywhere  that  bred  faster 
than  his,"  and  Rhodes  notes  a  lady  in  Baltimore, 
"richly  and  fashionably  dressed,  and  apparently 
moving  in  the  best  society,  who  derived  her  in- 
come from  the  sale  of  children  of  a  half-dozen 
negro  women  she  owned,  although  their  hub- 
bands  belonged  to  other  masters."  But  in  the 


296  THE  LADY 

consciousness  of  the  owner  of  a  human  stock- 
farm,  and  still  more  of  the  owner's  wife,  there 
was  a  sincere  contempt  for  the  next  link  in  the 
chain,  the  slave-trader  and  the  auctioneer;  while 
the  overseer,  the  actual  slave-driver  of  the  cot- 
ton-field, the  man  who  did  the  dirty  work  on 
which  the  whole  social  scheme  depended,  was 
despised  by  all.  In  fact  the  lady  of  the  plan- 
tation felt  toward  the  overseer  by  whose  exer- 
tions she  lived,  as  the  lady  of  other  economic 
dispensations  feels  toward  the  proprietor  of  the 
sweat-shop  whose  product  is  on  her  back. 

All  the  conditions  that  bore  hardly  on  the  man 
of  talent  were  equally  operative  on  the  woman, 
and  she  had  a  special  extinguisher  of  her  own 
in  the  nature  of  the  planter's  conception  of  the 
lady.  Her  man  did  not  wish  her  to  be  clever. 
There  is  at  the  first  glance  no  obvious  reason 
why  the  Southern  lady  should  not  have  been  a 
saloniere;  the  type  is  sufficiently  aristocratic 
and  exclusive,  one  would  think,  to  recommend 
it  to  the  gregarious  and  leisured  planter.  The 
student  is  surprised  to  find  that  on  the  contrary 
the  married  woman  had  virtually  no  social  ex- 
istence. The  woman  of  Southern  romance  is 
the  young  girl;  the  social  intercourse  of  the  lit- 
tle Southern  cities  consisted  chiefly  of  balls  and 
dances  at  which  the  young  girl  might  be  seen 
by  young  men.  When  she  was  married,  her 


LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES     297 

husband  carried  her  to  his  plantation,  and  there 
she  lived  in  isolation.  She  reverted  to  a  far 
earlier  type  than  that  of  saloniere,  the  type 
namely  of  the  twelfth  century  chatelaine.  Only 
the  few  who  maintained  town-houses  as  well  as 
country-houses  and  spent  part  of  every  year  in 
Richmond  or  Charleston  or  New  Orleans  re- 
tained their  hold  upon  communion  with  their 
kind,  and  for  them  a  staid  and  modified  social 
life  was  deemed  fitting.  For  them  the  dance 
was  over.  Instead  of  being  the  means  of  a 
wider  freedom,  marriage  was  an  abdication. 
Mrs.  Oilman  in  her  Recollections  of  a  South- 
ern Matron  describes  the  ideal  lady  of  the 
plantation.  "Mamma  possessed  more  than 
whole  acres  of  charms,  for  though  not  brilliant 
she  was  good-tempered  and  sensible.  A  demure 
look  and  reserved  manner  concealed  a  close 
habit  of  observation.  She  would  sit  in  com- 
pany for  hours,  making  scarcely  a  remark,  and 
recollect  afterwards  every  fact  that  had  been 
stated,  to  the  colour  of  a  riband  or  the  stripe 
of  a  waistcoat.  Home  was  her  true  sphere; 
there  everything  was  managed  with  prompti- 
tude and  decision  and  papa,  who  was  .  .  . 
an  active  planter  was  glad  to  find  his  domestic 
arrangements  quiet  and  orderly.  No  one  ever 
managed  an  establishment  better;  but  there  was 
no  appeal  from  her  opinions,  and  I  have  known 


298  THE  LADY 

her  even  eloquent  in  defending  a  recipe.  .  »  . 
Her  sausages  were  pronounced  to  be  the  best 
flavoured  in  the  neighbourhood ;  her  hog's  cheese 
was  delicacy  itself;  her  preserved  watermelons 
were  carved  with  the  taste  of  a  sculptor." 

When  the  heroine  of  the  work  was  herself 
married  she  remarked  that  the  planter's  bride 
"dreams  of  an  independent  sway  over  her  house- 
hold, devoted  love  and  unbroken  intercourse 
with  her  husband,  and  indeed  longs  to  be  re- 
leased from  the  eyes  of  others,  that  she  may 
dwell  only  beneath  the  sunbeam  of  his." 

If  we  turn  to  so  romantic  an  account  of 
Southern  ante-bellum  society  as  is  contained  in 
(for  instance)  Kennedy's  Swallow  Barn,  we 
find  a  marked  sentimental  discrimination  be- 
tween the  young  girl  and  the  matron.  Lovely 
maidens  are  portrayed,  brown  and  blond,  mad- 
cap and  demure.  Their  manners,  their  whims, 
their  dresses  are  important.  Their  love-affairs 
are  the  excitement  of  the  countryside.  But  the 
matron,  the  respected  head  of  the  establishment, 
is  touched  in  with  something  of  satire.  Her 
good  qualities  and  achievements  are  duly  set 
down;  her  affairs  are  said  to  go  like  clockwork; 
she  rises  with  the  lark  and  infuses  vigour  into 
her  recalcitrant  assistants.  But  her  charms  are 
not  the  author's  theme.  "She  is  a  thin  woman 
to  look  upon  and  a  feeble;  with  a  sallow  com- 


LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES    299 

plexion,  and  a  pair  of  animated  black  eyes 
which  impart  a  portion  of  fire  to  a  countenance 
otherwise  demure  from  the  paths  worn  across 
it  in  the  frequent  travel  of  a  low-country  ague." 
Her  contribution  to  social  enjoyment  seems  to 
have  consisted  in  playing  the  harpsichord  for 
the  children  to  dance  and  in  singing  The  Rose- 
tree  in  Full  Bearing.  For  the  rest,  her  an- 
nalist to  describe  her  foibles  dips  his  pen  in 
some  medium  which  from  the  old-fashioned 
acidity  of  its  flavour  might  be  the  lady's  own 
blackberry  cordial.  She  takes  more  pride 
(says  he)  in  her  leechcraft  than  becomes  a 
Christian  woman,  and  prepares  daily  doses  for 
the  helpless  youngsters  of  the  family,  both  white 
and  black.  And  there  is  an  element  of  the  mys- 
tical in  some  of  her  prescriptions:  "Nine  scoops 
of  water  in  the  hollow  of  the  hand,  from  the 
sycamore  spring,  for  three  mornings,  before  sun- 
rise, and  a  cup  of  strong  coffee  with  lemon-juice, 
will  break  an  ague,  try  it  when  you  will." 
Her  husband  laughs  at  her  and  depends  upon 
her. 

It  is  fair  to  say  that  Swallow  Barn  was 
written  before  the  femme  de  trente  ans  had  be- 
come domesticated  in  English  literature.  Mr. 
Page,  writing  in  an  age  in  which  she  is  fully 
appreciated,  feels  it  incumbent  upon  him  to 
celebrate  with  more  enthusiasm  the  lady  of  the 


300  THE  LADY 

plantation.  Very  charmingly  he  does  it,  yet  in 
his  page  as  plain  as  in  Kennedy's  stands  the 
record  of  her  limitations.  Her  life  was  on  its 
professional  side  the  life  of  the  Greek  lady. 
The  programme  laid  down  by  Ischomachus  for 
his  child-bride  governed  the  days  of  the  later 
mistress  of  slaves.  Each  was  the  wife  and 
steward  of  a  farmer.  Each  was  responsible  for 
the  reception  in  the  house  of  produce  of  the 
farm  intended  for  home  consumption.  Each 
must  keep  order  regnant  among  slaves  and 
goods.  A  surprising  amount  of  what  the  house- 
hold used  was  in  each  case  made  under  the  lady's 
direction  from  raw  material  produced  on  the 
estate.  The  Greek  lady  worked  with  wool,  the 
modern  lady  with  cotton,  but  each  must  under- 
stand spinning  and  weaving,  shaping  and  sew- 
ing. Each  was  the  chief  executive  of  a  large 
and  motley  community,  in  duty  bound  to  en- 
force the  laws.  And  each  was  responsible  for 
the  health  of  her  household;  it  was  her  duty  to 
prevent  sickness  if  possible,  and  when  it  came 
to  tend  it.  Each  doubtless  if  not  overtaxed  de- 
rived satisfaction  from  the  performance  of  im- 
portant work  bearing  directly  on  the  welfare  and 
happiness  of  those  she  loved  best,  but  neither 
could  be  called  a  free  woman.  In  the  case 
of  the  Greek  lady  we  see  this  plainly  enough. 
No  sentiment  had  arisen  in  her  day  to  mask  the 


LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES     301 

issue.  If  she  was  constrained  to  an  exacting 
profession  no  one  obscured  the  fact  by  calling 
her  a  queen,  or  with  a  much  stronger  connota- 
tion of  leisure,  an  angel.  In  the  case  of  the  lady 
of  the  plantation  we  are  misled  by  her  husband's 
vocabulary,  which  is  that  of  the  twelfth  century. 
It  is  hard  to  realise  that  he  could  combine  the 
manner  and  phrases  of  the  minnesinger  with  the 
practice  of  the  ancient  Athenian.  In  some  as- 
pects the  law-abiding  and  thrifty  Athenian  was 
the  better  husband  of  the  two ;  for  the  planter  in- 
demnified himself  for  the  fear  he  felt  for  his 
order  by  a  careless  courage  in  regard  to  his  in- 
dividual life,  and  for  the  lack  in  his  existence 
of  some  of  the  ordinary  sources  of  interest  by  the 
speculative  habit.  Thus  he  might  shoot  or  be 
shot  somewhat  casually,  and  he  might  lose  at 
cards  anything  from  his  wife's  most  valued 
house-servant  to  the  cotton-crop  for  the  year 
after  next. 

One  of  the  great  burdens  of  slavery  was  that 
it  overworked  the  lady.  She  was  typically  un- 
Hervitalised.  Mr.  Page  in  the  full  swing  of 
his  dithyrambic  declares  that  she  was  "often 
delicate  and  feeble  in  frame,  and  of  a  nervous 
organisation  so  sensitive  as  to  be  a  great  suf- 
ferer." Mrs.  Smedes,  who  has  left  us  so  beauti- 
ful a  picture  of  the  best  type  of  plantation  life, 
complains  of  the  heavy  drain  it  made  upon  the 


302  THE  LADY 

vitality  of  the  ruling  class.  "There  were  others 
who  felt  that  slavery  was  a  yoke  upon  the  white 
man's  neck  almost  as  galling  as  on  the  slave's; 
and  it  was  a  saying  that  the  mistress  of  a  planta- 
tion was  the  most  complete  slave  on  it.  I  can 
testify  to  the  truth  of  this  in  my  mother's  life 
and  experience.  There  was  no  hour  of  the  day 
that  she  was  not  called  upon  to  minister  to  their 
real  or  imaginary  wants.  Who  can  wonder- 
that  we  longed  for  a  lifting  of  the  incubus,  and 
that  in  the  family  of  Thomas  Dabney  the  first 
feeling,  when  the  war  was  ended,  was  of  joy 
that  one  dreadful  responsibility,  at  least,  was  re- 
moved?" It  is  quite  plain  from  the  record  that 
Mrs.  Dabney,  mistress  of  hundreds  of  slaves,  the 
happy  wife  of  a  faithful  husband,  died  of 
nervous  exhaustion.  She  was  overworked.  A 
slaveholder  could  not  get  rid  of  an  unprofitable 
servant.  The  good  abolitionist  in  Boston  be- 
lieved that  if  the  omelette  was  scorched,  Mammy 
Venus  was  strung  up  by  the  thumbs  to  receive 
forty  lashes;  but  the  owner  of  slaves  was  after 
all  a  man  with  bowels  like  another.  He  could 
not  flog  a  person  with  whom  he  associated  every 
day.  It  was  the  slave  who  traded  on  the  soft- 
ness of  a  good  master,  as  we  may  learn  from  an 
instructive  little  episode  in  the  Dabney  family. 
"After  the  mistress  had  passed  away,  Alcey 
resolved  that  she  would  not  cook  any  more,  and 


LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES     303 

she  took  her  own  way  of  getting  assigned  to 
field  work.  She  systematically  disobeyed 
orders,  and  stole  or  destroyed  the  greater  part 
of  the  provisions  given  her  for  the  table.  No 
special  notice  was  taken,  so  she  resolved  to  show 
more  plainly  that  she  was  tired  of  the  kitchen. 
Instead  of  getting  the  chickens  for  dinner  from 
the  coop  as  usual  she  unearthed  from  some  cor- 
ner an  old  hen  that  had  been  sitting  for  six 
weeks,  and  served  her  up  as  a  fricassee!  We 
had  company  to  dinner  that  day;  that  would 
have  deterred  most  of  the  servants  but  not  Alcey. 
She  achieved  her  object,  for  she  was  sent  to  the 
field  the  next  day,  without  so  much  as  a  repri- 
mand, if  I  remember  rightly." 

At  a  time  when  timidity  in  the  North  and  fear 
in  the  South  ruled  conversation,  good  Miss 
Martineau  trod  heavily  through  American 
society,  asking  terrible  questions  and  making  ob- 
servations hardly  less  startling  than  obvious. 
Some  deliberate  fictions  were  poured  into  her 
ear-trumpet,  which  she  was  unable  to  check  as 
another  might  have  done  to  whom  general  con- 
versation was  audible;  and  sometimes  doubtless 
she  misunderstood  what  was  said  to  her.  But 
if  her  ears  were  not  always  trustworthy,  her 
eyes  enjoyed  a  compensating  power.  She 
passed  two  years  in  this  country,  devoting  five 
months  to  a  tour  of  the  Southern  states, — Mary- 


304  THE  LADY 

land,  Virginia,  the  Carolinas,  Georgia,  Ala- 
bama, Louisiana,  Kentucky  and  Tennessee. 
She  was  everywhere  kindly  received  and  found 
the  planter  ready  and  willing  to  talk  of  the  chief 
circumstance  of  his  life.  Fanny  Kemble,  five 
years  later,  decided  to  set  down  nothing  in 
her  plantation  journal  that  was  not  the  result 
of  her  own  observation,  because  she  had  heard 
people  boasting  how  gloriously  they  had  gulled 
Miss  Martineau.  But  it  will  hardly  be  sup- 
posed that  any  slave-owner  exerted  his  powers 
of  mystification  to  give  the  stranger  an  unduly 
dark  view  of  the  peculiar  institution;  if  we  are 
to  read  her  narrative  with  allowance  for  mis- 
information wilfully  supplied,  our  confidence 
must  be  least  in  the  passages  most  favourable  to 
slavery. 

Miss  Martineau  was  astonished,  as  other 
travellers  were,  by  the  hardships  of  the  lady  of 
the  plantation.  She  must  rise  early  and  but 
late  take  rest.  A  comfortable  house  is  to  be 
had  only  as  the  result  of  systematic  arrangement, 
but  systematic  arrangement  was  impossible  to 
slaves.  The  Englishwoman  stood  aghast  at  see- 
ing so  many  servants  accomplish  so  little.  She 
would  have  preferred  to  serve  herself  rather 
than  wait  for  the  tardy  and  ineffective  service 
of  the  blacks.  She  found  them  lolling  against 
the  bed-posts  before  she  was  up  in  the  morn- 


LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES     305 

ing,  leaning  against  sofas  through  the  house 
during  the  day,  officiously  offering  service  at 
every  turn  and  generally  making  a  mess  of  it. 
She  found  little  real  comfort  in  the  planter's 
house,  and  said  indeed  in  her  downright  way 
that  with  one  exception  she  never  saw  a  clean 
room  or  bed  within  the  boundaries  of  the  slave- 
states.  She  saw  the  lady  without  leisure  save 
as  it  was  bought  at  the  price  of  despair  and  a 
momentary  determination  to  let  things  go. 
She  saw  the  great  bunch  of  keys  at  the  lady's 
girdle  in  constant  requisition,  for  everything 
consumable  must  be  locked  up,  and  yet  must  be 
forthcoming  at  the  whimsical  demand  of  minis- 
trants  whose  orbits  were  incalculable.  She  saw 
the  lady  constrained  to  follow  up  personally 
every  order  she  gave  lest  the  result  be  confusion. 
She  found  and  noted  many  remarkable  women 
whose  powers  were  equal  to  their  responsibil- 
ities, women  competent  to  rule  over  a  little 
barbarous  society,  who  realised  the  gravity  of 
the  duty  that  lay  upon  them  to  watch  over  the 
health  and  regulate  the  lives  of  a  number  of 
persons  who  could  in  no  wise  take  care  of  them- 
se  ves.  Often  she  found  a  lady  who  was  un- 
equal to  her  task,  timid,  languid  and  unintelli- 
gt  nt.  The  house  of  that  woman  would  not  be 
a  pleasant  one  in  which  to  stay.  But  in  the 
main  she  was  impressed  by  the  lady's  capacity 


306  THE  LADY 

for  making  the  best  of  a  system  for  which  she 
was  not  responsible  and  of  which  she  was  the 
garlanded  victim. 

Miss  Martineau  had  no  hesitation  in  asking 
any  lady  she  met  for  a  candid  expression  of 
opinion  of  the  system,  and  some  very  singular 
confessions  were  poured  into  the  sympathetic 
ear-trumpet,  if  it  reported  truly  to  its  ingenu- 
ous owner.  Two  ladies,  "the  distinguishing 
ornaments  of  a  very  superior  society,"  were 
very  unhappy  and  told  their  new  friend  what 
a  curse  they  found  slavery  to  be.  A  planter's 
wife,  in  the  bitterness  of  her  heart,  declared 
that  she  was  but  "the  chief  slave  of  the  harem." 
One  singular  little  anecdote  shows  how  the 
lady's  logic  could  work  to  her  husband's  credit. 
"One  sultry  morning  I  was  sitting  with  a  friend 
who  was  giving  me  all  manner  of  information 
about  her  husband's  slaves.  While  we  were 
talking  one  of  the  house  slaves  passed  us.  I 
observed  that  she  appeared  superior  to  all  the 
rest;  to  which  my  friend  assented.  'She  is  A's 
wife?'  said  I.  'We  call  her  A's  wife  but  she 
has  never  been  married  to  him.  A  and  she  came 
to  my  husband  five  years  ago  and  asked  him  to 
let  them  marry:  but  he  could  not  allow  it,  be- 
cause he  had  not  made  up  his  mind  whether  to 
sell  A;  and  he  hates  parting  husband  and  wife. 


LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES     307 

They  have  four  children  but  my  husband  has 
never  been  able  to  let  them  marry;  he  has  not 
determined  yet  whether  he  shall  sell  A.'  " 

Another  story  is  irresistible  in  this  connection, 
though  it  came  to  Miss  Martineau  at  one  re- 
move. A  Southern  lady  told  a  group  of  friends 
the  romantic  story  of  a  pretty  mulatto  girl  whom 
she  had  once  owned.  A  young  man  came  to  stay 
at  her  house  who  fell  in  love  with  the  girl.  The 
girl  fled  to  her  mistress  for  protection  and  re- 
ceived it.  Some  weeks  later  the  young  man 
came  again,  saying  that  he  was  so  desperately 
in  love  with  the  girl  he  could  not  live  without 
her.  "I  pitied  the  young  man,"  concluded  the 
lady,  "so  I  sold  the  girl  to  him  for  $1500." 

The  characteristic  virtue  of  the  lady  of  the 
plantation,  Miss  Martineau  found  to  be  pa- 
tience. Only  the  native,  born  and  bred  among 
slaves,  achieved  it  in  perfection.  Foreigners 
or  Northerners  who  became  slaveholders  could 
not  compass  it;  they  were  impatient  and  some- 
times severe;  their  tempers  broke  down  alto- 
gether; their  nerves  were  racked  and  their  self- 
control  shattered  by  the  unconquerable  inertia 
of  the  slave.  But  the  mistress  born  in  slavery 
hardly  noticed  that  the  company  were  waiting 
twenty  minutes  for  the  second  course,  and  was 
willing  to  repeat  an  order  unto  seventy  times 


3o8  THE  LADY 

seven.  A  certain  amount  of  lying  and  stealing, 
of  disobedience  and  procrastination,  was  allowed 
the  slave  daily  with  his  other  rations. 

No  problem-novel  could  be  more  interesting 
than  the  true  narrative  of  the  experiences  of 
Frances  Anne  Kemble  in  connection  with 
slavery.  This  young  woman  was  of  a  strongly 
individualistic  type,  being  not  only  English  but 
a  Kemble  and  an  artist.  Her  appearance  on  the 
stage,  followed  by  immediate  popularity,  had 
saved  her  father's  theatre  from  insolvency. 
London  petted  her;  people  of  importance  rec- 
ognised her  importance.  After  a  triumphant 
tour  of  the  United  States  she  made  a  love-match 
with  Mr.  Pierce  Butler  of  Philadelphia,  and  in 
the  winter  of  1838-9  she  -with  her  two  little 
children  accompanied  her  husband  to  his  plan- 
tations in  Georgia.  She  had  contemplated  the 
theory  of  slavery  with  entire  distaste  as  she  ad- 
mitted in  a  letter  written  before  she  began  her 
journey:  "Assuredly  I  am  going  prejudiced 
against  slavery,  for  I  am  an  Englishwoman" 
(it  was  precisely  five  years  since  slavery  had 
been  abolished  in  Jamaica,  and  the  slave-trade 
that  had  filled  the  Southern  colonies  with  ne- 
groes had  been  continued  by  the  British  govern- 
ment in  the  face  of  earnest  prayers  from  the 
colonies  that  it  might  be  stopped)  "in  whom 
the  absence  of  such  a  prejudice  would  be  dis- 


LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES     309 

graceful.  Nevertheless,  I  go  prepared  to  find 
many  mitigations  in  the  practice  to  the  general 
injustice  and  cruelty  of  the  system — much  kind- 
ness on  the  part  of  the  masters,  much  content 
on  the  part  of  the  slaves."  This  impetuous  and 
able  young  woman,  not  only  warmhearted  but 
highly  intelligent,  was  forced  by  her  qualities 
to  judge  for  herself  of  the  system  by  which  she 
and  her  children  were  supported.  Incidentally 
she  was  forced  to  judge  her  husband,  and  as 
all  the  world  knows,  she  finally  went  back  to 
her  own  people.  Her  Journal  of  a  Residence 
on  a  Georgian  Plantation  naturally  deals  only 
gingerly  with  her  personal  relations.  It  is 
easy  enough  to  fill  in  the  details  of  the  bewilder- 
ment of  both  young  people,  the  irritation  and 
dismay  of  the  planter  as  his  uncontrollable 
wife  went  about  the  estates  cheerfully  teaching 
insubordination  to  the  hands,  and  the  panic  of 
the  wife  when  she  discovered  that  her  husband 
was  sincerely  unconvinced  of  sin  toward  his 
black  people.  The  two  estates,  one  devoted  to 
cotton,  the  other  to  rice,  had  long  been  in  the 
hands  of  overseers,  unvisited  by  a  master.  The 
pecuniary  returns  had  been  satisfactory,  and  the 
plantations  had  a  good  repute  as  being  well- 
managed.  But  they  were  very  different  from 
the  long-established  homestead  plantations  of 
Virginia.  On  the  rice-plantation  the  planter's 


310  THE  LADY 

residence  consisted  of  "three  small  rooms  and 
three  still  smaller,  which  would  be  more  ap- 
propriately designated  as  closets,  a  wooden  re- 
cess by  way  of  pantry,  and  a  kitchen  detached 
from  the  dwelling — a  mere  wooden  out-house, 
with  no  floor  but  the  bare  earth,  and  for  furni- 
ture a  congregation  of  filthy  negroes,  who 
lounge  in  and  out  of  it  like  hungry  hounds  at 
all  hours  of  the  day  and  night,  picking  up  such 
scraps  of  food  as  they  can  find  about,  which  they 
discuss  squatting  down  upon  their  hams.  Of 
our  three  apartments,  one  is  our  sitting,  eating 
and  living  room,  and  is  sixteen  feet  by  fifteen. 
The  walls  are  plastered  indeed,  but  neither  pa- 
pered nor  painted;  it  is  divided  from  our  bed- 
room by  a  dingy  wooden  partition  covered  all 
over  with  hooks,  pegs  and  nails,  to  which  hats, 
caps,  keys,  etc.,  are  suspended  in  graceful  ir- 
regularity. The  doors  open  by  means  of 
wooden  latches,  raised  by  means  of  small  bits  of 
packthread — I  imagine  the  same  primitive  order 
of  fastening  celebrated  in  the  touching  chronicle 
of  Red  Riding  Hood;  how  they  shut  I  will  not 
attempt  to  describe,  as  the  shutting  of  a  door  is 
a  process  of  extremely  rare  occurrence  through- 
out the  whole  Southern  country.  The  third 
room,  a  chamber  with  sloping  ceiling,  immedi- 
ately over  our  sitting  room  and  under  the  roof, 
is  appropriated  to  the  nurse  and  my  two  babies. 


LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES     311 

Of  the  closets,  one  is  the  overseer's  bedroom, 
the  other  his  office,  and  the  third,  adjoining  our 
bedroom,  is  Mr. 's  dressing  room  and  cab- 
inet d'affaires,  where  he  gives  audiences  to  the 
negroes,  redresses  grievances,  distributes  red 
woollen  caps,  shaves  himself,  and  performs  the 
other  offices  of  his  toilet.  Such  being  our 
abode,  I  think  you  will  allow  there  is  little 
danger  of  my  being  dazzled  by  the  luxurious 
splendours  of  a  Southern  slave  residence." 

The  plantation  was  in  fact  not  a  home  but 
an  industrial  plant.  In  visiting  it  the  planter 
expected  such  hardships  as  the  owner  of  a 
western  mine  might  have  to  encounter  to-day. 
This  is  not  the  type  of  plantation  that  lends  it- 
self to  romantic  treatment;  it  is  not  what  the 
Southern  lady  thinks  of  when  she  describes  the 
elegance  of  the  life  of  her  youth.  But  it  was 
a  well  accredited  and  very  common  type  in  the 
rice  and  cotton  states,  and  must  be  taken  into 
account  as  fully  as  the  other.  Many  a  lady 
lived  on  such  a  plantation  without  mental  suf- 
fering, or  at  any  rate  without  expressing  such 
suffering,  and  we  can  only  guess  in  the  absence 
of  her  testimony  at  the  reasons  for  her  ease  of 
mind. 

Mrs.  Butler  paid  visits  to  the  ladies  of  neigh- 
bouring plantations  and  found  that  they  lived  in 
no  greater  luxury  than  she.  The  grounds  were 


3i2  THE  LADY 

shaggy  and  unkempt,  the  houses  "ruinous,  rack- 
rent  and  tumble-down."  Traversing  one  day 
a  charming  woodride  which  divided  two  estates, 
her  mind  "not  unnaturally  dwelt  upon  the  terms 
of  deadly  feud  in  which  the  two  families  own- 
ing them  are  living  with  each  other.  A  hor- 
rible quarrel  has  occurred  quite  lately  upon  the 
subject  of  the  ownership  of  this  very  ground  I 
was  skirting,  between  Dr.  H.  and  young  Mr.  W. ; 
they  have  challenged  each  other.  The  terms 
have  appeared  as  a  sort  of  advertisement  in  the 
local  paper,  and  are  to  the  effect  that  they  are  to 
fight  at  a  certain  distance  with  certain  weapons — 
firearms,  of  course ;  that  there  is  to  be  on  the  per- 
son of  each  a  white  paper,  or  mark,  immediately 
over  the  region  of  the  heart,  as  a  point  for  di- 
rect aim;  and  whoever  kills  the  other  is  to  have 
the  privilege  of  cutting  off  his  head  and  stick- 
ing it  up  on  a  pole  on  the  piece  of  land  which 
was  the  origin  of  the  debate."  In  the  sequel 
it  appears  there  was  no  duel,  but  Dr.  H.,  meet- 
ing his  enemy  by  chance  in  an  hotel  shot  him 
dead  upon  the  spot. 

In  paying  her  visits,  Mrs.  Butler,  like  Miss 
Martineau,  plunged  by  preference  into  the  most 
delicate  of  questions.  How  can  you  stand 
slavery?  she  would  genially  ask  her  hostess. 
Where  the  answers  are  recorded,  the  ladies 
seem  naturally  enough  to  have  shirked  the 


LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES     313 

question  of  abstract  justice  and  to  have  argued, 
on  the  assumption  of  the  inevitability  of  slavery, 
that  kindness  and  indulgence  were  so  common 
among  masters  as  to  make  the  slave's  life 
far  happier  in  practice  than  in  theory.  Mrs. 
Butler  makes  a  shrewd  comment  which  goes 
far  to  solve  the  whole  problem.  "They" 
(women)  "are  very  seldom  just,  and  are  gen- 
erally treated  with  more  indulgence  than  jus- 
tice by  men."  In  Mrs.  Butler's  own  reflec- 
tions, her  personal  helplessness  is  the  obstacle 
she  comes  up  against  when  she  tries  to  help  the 
helpless  slave.  An  intelligent  boy  of  sixteen 
asked  her  to  teach  him  to  read.  To  do  so  was 
to  break  the  law  under  which  she  lived,  and 
though  she  would  probably  not  have  boggled 
at  mere  law-breaking,  she  was  embarrassed  by 
the  consideration  that  her  husband  would  have 
to  pay  the  fines  which  she  would  incur  for  the 
first  and  second  offenses.  The  third  offense 
was  punishable  by  imprisonment.  She  sighed 
to  think  that  she  could  not  begin  with  Aleck's 
third  lesson  so  that  the  penalty  might  light  on 
the  right  shoulders.  She  winds  up  by  saying, 
"I  certainly  intend  to  teach  Aleck  to  read.  I 

certainly  won't  tell  Mr. anything  about  it. 

I'll  leave  him  to  find  it  out,  as  slaves,  and  serv- 
ants, and  children,  and  all  oppressed  and  ignor- 
ant and  uneducated  and  unprincipled  people 


3H  THE  LADY 

do ;  then,  if  he  forbids  me,  I  can  stop — perhaps 
before  then  the  lad  may  have  learned  his  letters." 
This  brilliant  and  energetic  young  woman  who 
had  demonstrated  her  ability  to  maintain  herself 
in  economic  independence,  found  herself  sud- 
denly reduced  to  the  stereotyped  movements  of 
the  lady-acrobat;  a  spontaneous  gesture  would 
topple  her  husband  over. 

The  general  statement  that  the  lady  of  the 
South  in  the  early  thirties  had  but  little  to  say 
for  herself  might  seem  to  a  reader  of  Mrs.  Gil- 
man's  Southern  Matron  to  need  modification. 
This  amiable  and  somewhat  amusing  work 
hangs,  upon  a  thread  of  love-story,  a  series  of 
miniatures.  The  revolutionary  grandfather, 
the  father  who  was  a  Harvard  graduate,  the 
mother  whom  we  must  make  the  most  of  as  one 
of  the  few  recorded  ladies  of  the  time,  the  young 
girl  who  tells  the  tale  and  whose  adventures 
glow  with  an  importance  conceded  not  only  by 
this  book  but  by  the  society  which  existed  for 
the  purpose  of  getting  her  married,  the  some- 
what disillusioned  but  philosophical  matron, 
all  are  endowed  by  Mrs.  Oilman  with  the  high 
colour,  the  almost  superhuman  elegance  which 
the  miniature-painter's  sitter  has  always  ex- 
pected as  his  money's  worth.  There  can  be  no 
doubt  that  Mrs.  Oilman's  subjects  would  be  de- 
lighted to  have  posterity  believe  they  looked 


LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES     315 

just  as  she  presents  them.  Their  charming  pro- 
files are  not  projected  against  a  stormy  sky;  no 
hint  is  given  that  their  world  is  not  as  durable 
as  delicate.  Here,  then,  the  pleased  reader  is 
inclined  to  say,  is  a  portrait  of  the  Southern 
lady's  life  painted  by  herself;  how  delightful 
a  life  it  was  and  how  skilfully  she  renders  itl 
The  system  of  education  described  in  the  work 
itself  seems  somewhat  unsatisfactory,  but  what 
more  could  one  ask  of  a  system  than  that  it 
should  produce  girls  so  competent  as  this  one 
to  express  themselves?  It  is  a  disappointment 
when  further  research  shows  that  Mrs.  Oilman 
was  born  in  Boston  and  came  to  Charleston  as 
the  wife  of  a  Unitarian  minister.  It  is  New 
England,  charmed  and  subjugated,  that  voices 
the  sentiment  of  the  Carolinas.  Her  descrip- 
tion of  the  education  of  girls  remains  where  it 
was,  but  its  fairest  fruit  proves  to  have  been  fas- 
tened upon  it  like  an  apple  on  a  Christmas-tree. 
"Mamma"  (says  the  heroine  of  the  book)  had 
been  an  "Edisto  belle,"  but  when  the  curtain 
rises  she  had  entered  upon  her  second  stage. 
The  children's  education  had  been  carried  on 
chiefly  at  home, — altogether  in  the  case  of  the 
girls.  As  they  grew  older  they  hazed  their 
governess  out  of  the  house,  with  the  high  spirit 
becoming  their  masterful  race.  Papa  shook  his 
riding-whip  playfully  at  the  culprits  and  ad- 


3i6  THE  LADY 

vertised  for  a  man.  An  ignorant  and  incom- 
petent youth  from  Connecticut  applied  and  for 
some  unexplained  reason  was  accepted.  When 
his  brief  term  came  to  a  violent  end,  papa  re- 
solved to  educate  his  children  himself.  For  the 
first  three  days  they  were  very  amiable,  he  very 
paternal ;  on  the  fourth  John  was  turned  out  of 
the  room,  Richard  was  pronounced  a  mule,  and 
Cornelia  went  sobbing  to  mamma,  while  papa 
said  he  might  be  compelled  to  ditch  rice-fields 
but  he  would  never  undertake  to  teach  children 
again. 

Then  mamma  tried  her  hand.  Her  own  edu- 
cation had  not  been  wide  and  she  wisely  limited 
her  subjects  of  instruction  to  reading,  writing  and 
spelling.  Mamma  already  combined  the  activ- 
ities of  the  matron  of  an  orphan  asylum  where 
the  orphans'  ages  ranged  from  one  minute  to  a 
hundred  years,  of  a  physician  in  good  practice 
and  of  the  keeper  of  a  country-store.  Hardly 
had  she  said  "Spell  irrigate,"  when  the  coachman 
appeared  to  ask  for  the  key  to  the  oat-bin.  Chloe 
came  next  for  a  dose  of  calomel  for  Syphax. 
Then  Maum  Phillis  brought  in  "little  maussa" 
to  nurse.  Lafayette  and  Venus  fell  out  over 
their  work  and  mamma  must  arbitrate.  A 
field  hand  who  had  received  a  cut  in  his  ankle 
from  a  hoe  was  brought  into  the  hall,  and 
mamma  must  minister  to  him.  She  inspected 


LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES     317 

the  great  foot,  covered  with  blood  and  sweat, 
superintended  a  bath,  prepared  an  application, 
extracted  some  dirt  from  the  wound  and  ban- 
daged it.  Mammy  Phillis  sent  some  eggs  for 
sale  and  Daddy  Ajax  reported  that  he  had 
broken  the  axe  and  requisitioned  a  new  one. 
While  this  last  matter  was  under  discussion, 
the  dinner-horn  sounded.  That  evening  a  party 
of  visitors  arrived  for  a  week's  stay,  and  thus 
ended  mamma's  effort  as  governess.  In  the  in- 
terest of  romance  the  next  instructor  was  a  beau- 
tiful though  consumptive  youth  from  New 
England  with  the  forehead  of  the  period,  "ris- 
ing in  its  white  mass  like  a  tower  of  mind." 
This  young  man  covered  the  field  of  human 
knowledge,  except  the  French  language,  which 
was  imparted  by  one  to  whom  it  was  native,  but 
whose  "conscience  only  embraced  externals." 
Papa  was  satisfied  if  he  paid  round  sums  for 
education,  and  mamma  was  easy  if  the  teach- 
ers seemed  busy.  The  tutor  rambled  in  the 
woods  with  his  fair  charge,  fell  in  love  with 
her,  and,  most  honourably  allowing  cpnceal- 
ment  to  feed  upon  his  lungs,  returned  home  to 
die. 

When  the  little  girl  who  was  afterwards  to  be 
Mrs.  Roger  A.  Pryor  was  not  yet  ten  years  old 
the  aunt  with  whom  she  lived  realised  the 
shortcomings  of  education  on  the  plantation 


3i8  THE  LADY 

and  took  up  her  residence  in  Charlottesville, 
which  was  then  beginning  to  be  the  centre  of  a 
little  group  of  cultivated  people.  The  child 
was  entered  at  the  Female  Seminary.  The 
headmaster  examined  her  and  prescribed  her 
lessons.  The  books  given  her  were  Aber- 
crombie's  Intellectual  Philosophy,  Watts'  Im- 
provement of  the  Mind,  Goldsmith's  History  of 
Greece  and  somebody's  Natural  Philosophy. 
A  more  advanced  little  student  blazed  the  trail 
for  the  child  through  these  works,  enclosing  in 
brackets  the  briefest  possible  answers  to  the 
questions  in  Watts.  Thus  the  little  girl  was  en- 
abled with  labour  and  tears  to  say  (when  asked 
"What  is  logic?"),  "Logic  is  the  art  of  investi- 
gating and  communicating  Truth."  After  a 
few  months  in  the  seminary  she  was  removed 
by  the  good  aunt,  and  home  education  began 
again.  She  read  classical  English  literature 
with  her  aunt,  she  learned  French  from  a  Ger- 
man, and  she  studied  music  under  the  direction 
of  an  itinerant  master  whose  relations  with  the 
sheriff  made  it  often  convenient  for  him  to  ap- 
pear at  midnight  to  give  a  lesson. 

Young  Charles  Dabney,  writing  to  his  father 
from  the  University  of  Virginia,  expresses  his 
pleasure  that  a  governess  has  been  secured  for 
his  sister  Sarah.  "Let  her,"  says  the  pompous 
and  high-minded  collegian,  "  have  every  oppor- 


LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES     319 

tunity;  and  do  not  think  that  because  she  is  a 
woman  any  kind  of  education  will  be  sufficient 
for  her  to  keep  house.  I  know  you  do  not  think 
this,  yet  there  are  many  who  constantly  say  that 
a  woman  ought  not  to  be  well  educated, — that 
any  kind  of  education  will  be  enough  for  a  house- 
keeper, and  that  a  very  intelligent  and  accom- 
plished woman  is  likely  to  make  a  bad  wife." 

A  special  piquancy  is  lent  to  the  spectacle  of 
the  lady  as  mistress  of  slaves  by  a  knowledge  of 
her  history,  a  review  of  which  might  be  fitly 
entitled  "Up  from  Slavery."  Herr  Bebel  in 
his  striking  way  declares  that  woman  was  the 
first  slave,  "she  was  a  slave  before  the  slave  ex- 
isted." The  gradual  promotion  of  an  occa- 
sional slave  to  comparative  idleness  began  to 
make  a  lady  of  her.  When  she  was  given  con- 
trol over  other  slaves  and  when  she  was  con- 
sidered to  be  her  master's  wife  in  some  special 
sense  which  differentiated  her  from  the  other 
women  who  bore  him  children,  the  process  was 
complete.  Her  idleness  consisted  in  release 
from  useful  manual  labour,  and  was  an  evi- 
dence of  her  husband's  wealth.  As  such  it  was 
valuable  to  him,  and  she  preserved  it  at  his  com- 
mand. Not  only  was  she  excused  from  labour, 
— she  was  forbidden  it.  The  Chinese,  a  logical 
and  direct  people,  cripple  the  little  girls  of  the 
gentle  class  so  that  they  may  bear  the  outward 


320  THE  LADY 

visible  sign  of  incapacity  to  labour.  The  ham- 
pering dress  of  the  European  lady  has  the  same 
purpose.  The  etiquette  which  everywhere  for- 
bids the  lady  to  serve  herself  is  closely  bound 
up  with  her  husband's  amour  propre.  He  be- 
lieves that  his  objection  to  seeing  his  wife  oc- 
cupied in  useful  toil  is  sheer  consideration  of 
the  strong  for  the  weak,  whereas  it  is  largely 
based  on  the  fear  that  her  exertions  will  reflect 
on  his  ability  to  compete  with  other  men  for 
the  prizes  of  life.  The  lady  of  the  proprie- 
tary household  is  therefore  as  much  under  orders 
as  any  of  her  subordinates,  but  her  orders  are  not 
to  work  with  her  hands.  This  by  no  means  dis- 
penses her  from  other  labour.  She  uses  more 
nervous  energy  in  causing  a  task  to  be  done  by 
incompetent  servants  than  it  would  cost  her  to 
do  it  herself,  but  she  is  not  allowed  to  do  it 
herself.  In  the  presence  of  slavery, — in  Con- 
stantinople, for  instance,  or  in  South  Carolina, 
— the  performance  of  manual  labour  would  be 
of  course  more  shameful  than  elsewhere. 
Writers  dealing  with  the  old  South,  naturally 
struck  with  its  feudalistic  survivals,  are  inclined 
to  dwell  upon  them  to  the  exclusion  of  its  orien- 
talism. But  the  feudal  lady  was  allowed  to  de- 
velop her  mind.  She  was  better  educated  than 
'her  husband.  When  circumstances  made  her 
a  patron  of  literature,  minnesong  bloomed  and 


LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES     321 

the  romance  of  chivalry.  The  orientalised  lady 
of  the  South  was  discouraged  from  systematic 
education;  in  fact  it  was  virtually  impossible 
for  her  to  get  it.  Her  husband  was  far  better 
educated  than  she.  The  literature  produced 
to  supply  her  demands  was  that  of  Mrs.  South- 
worth  and  Miss  Evans.  It  filled  the  planter 
with  unfeigned  horror  to  hear  of  the  employ- 
ment of  women  in  the  Northern  states  for  useful 
purposes.  Thomas  Dabney  was  reduced  to 
great  poverty  in  his  old  age  by  his  determination 
to  pay  debts  incurred  through  the  bad  faith  of 
another.  The  touching  picture  of  the  heroic 
old  man  and  his  daughters  giving  up  such  ease 
of  life  as  the  war  had  left  them  shows  that  some 
illusions  had  survived.  His  chivalrous  nature 
(says  his  daughter)  had  always  revolted  from 
the  sight  of  a  woman  doing  hard  work,  and  he 
could  not  have  survived  the  knowledge  that  his 
daughters  had  stood  at  the  washtub.  So  he  did 
the  washing  himself,  beginning  in  his  seven- 
tieth year.  So  artfully  is  the  human  mind  com- 
posed that  he  who  had  complacently  employed 
women  all  his  life  to  hoe  his  cotton  without  pay, 
could  not  stand  the  demolition  of  the  lady.  It 
remains  to  be  said  that  it  was  not  every  planter 
whose  orientalism  was  of  so  altogether  lovable 
a  type  as  Thomas  Dabney's. 
The  Southern  lady  was  forced  by  war  and 


322  THE  LADY 

ruin  to  make  in  a  day  the  transition  that  the  rest 
of  the  world  had  taken  several  centuries  to  ef- 
fect. And  she  had  to  make  it  under  the  most 
disheartening  conditions.  In  many  cases  she 
was  mourning  for  a  man  who  had  died  defend- 
ing a  cause  of  which  no  one  but  his  fellows 
would  take  his  point  of  view.  It  was  plain  that 
the  men  of  the  South  would  go  down  in  history 
as  having  fought  to  retain  an  institution  which 
the  world  at  large  had  come  to  think  altogether 
iniquitous.  And  they  had  been  beaten.  That 
the  Southern  lady  should  change  her  opinions 
was  not  to  be  expected;  her  mental  training  was 
not  of  a  kind  to  make  reasoning  an  easy  or  a 
familiar  process.  If  she  had  been  capable  of 
changing  her  opinions  she  would  have  been  all 
the  time  a  different  kind  of  woman  and  slavery 
would  have  come  to  an  end  long  before.  It 
was  not  then  with  the  inspiration  of  an  awaken- 
ing but  with  the  bitterness  of  uncomprehension, 
and  therefore  with  all  the  more  heroism,  that 
after  being  so  roughly  tumbled  from  her  high 
place  she  picked  herself  up  and  made  herself  use- 
ful. A  Southern  gentleman  told  Miss  Martineau 
that  nothing  but  the  possession  of  genius  or  the 
arrival  of  calamity  could  rescue  the  lady  of  the 
plantation  from  her  orientalism.  What  genius 
could  at  best  have  done  but  for  an  individual 
here  and  there,  calamity  did  for  a  whole  class. 


LADY  OF  THE  SLAVE  STATES     323 

As  the  calamity  was  unexampled,  so  was  the 
response.  It  has  perhaps  not  happened  twice 
in  history  that  so  great  a  number  of  civilised 
women  were  reduced  from  comfort  to  misery 
in  the  same  length  of  time  as  in  the  confederate 
states  during  the  last  two  years  of  the  Civil  War. 
The  courage  of  their  men  and  their  own  cour- 
age served  but  to  prolong  the  struggle  and  to 
deepen  the  misery.  And  the  misery  produced 
a  type  of  heroism  compounded  of  high  spirit, 
endurance  and  efficiency,  that  the  world  has 
agreed  to  honour  as  one  of  the  most  stimulating 
and  admirable  achievements  of  the  race. 


THE  END 


3-7(0 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGONAl  UBWPir  FAOUTY 


000718496     3 


